Letter: Concerns cast aside, Revolution Wind lumbers ahead

Posted 10/19/22

Although the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) invites public comment on offshore wind energy projects and I duly submitted one, I know Revolution Wind is a done deal. There’s just too …

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Letter: Concerns cast aside, Revolution Wind lumbers ahead

Posted

Although the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) invites public comment on offshore wind energy projects and I duly submitted one, I know Revolution Wind is a done deal. There’s just too much money and political capital at stake for the outcome to be any other than full steam ahead as fast and forceful as feasibly possible.

And we might as well abandon all hope when the wind industrialists succeed in co-opting mainstream marine and bird environmental organizations into giving the thumbs up to the destruction of the seabed and to turning the North Atlantic flyway into an aviary obstacle course — as they have.

Even so, it is still worth noting that the few humans who stand to gain tangible returns (i.e., boatloads of money) from planting thousands of 85-story tall wind turbines from Massachusetts to North Carolina are flying blind — like roseate terns into football-field length blades, rotating at up to 200 mph.

The wind industrialists and their enablers have no idea how what they are doing is going to affect the less than 350 North Atlantic Right Whales (NARW) left on the planet. NARW’s nursery and feeding grounds are in the same waters off Massachusetts and Rhode Island the federal government has leased out to seven multinational corporations.

They have no idea how the electromagnetic energy emitted by thousands of miles of high voltage electrical cables connecting turbine to turbine to offshore converter substations to onshore substations will affect the four species of sea turtles who migrate through this same area and who, scientists believe, navigate by the angle and intensity of Earth’s magnetic field. These four sea turtle species are in rapid decline, with the kemp’s ridley sea turtle — like NARW — listed as “critically endangered.”

They have no idea how the blasting of the seabed to “liquidize” the ocean floor for the laying of these cables and years-long pile driving to construct their 1,400 square miles of ocean skyscrapers will affect the highly sensitive, complex auditory systems of whales and other sound-sensitive sea animals.

They have no reliable data on how migratory birds, including the endangered piping plover and roseate tern, can move through or around a 900,000-acre wall of 873’ tall wind turbines, checker-boarded one to 8/10th of a mile apart, each with a rotary “swept area” of seven football fields.

These alleged climate crusaders have little to say about the negative aspects of their so-called "green," "renewable" technology, which is neither. Mining for the highly toxic, rare-earth metals required to make turbines, solar panels, and lithium-ion batteries poisons water and destroys ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.

Nor do any of them talk much about the colossal amounts of steel and concrete it takes to construct behemoth turbines, the staggering amount of fossil fuels required to build and power fleets of ships and other vehicles for transport, installation, and maintenance of offshore wind turbines. (I would also include their inevitable decommissioning, since it is unlikely that these turbines will last more than 15-20 years in the harsh North Atlantic, but we all know they will likely leave their lubricant leaking, rusty ruins to eventually fall into the ocean.)

It pretty much all boils down to how in order to “save” the planet from climate change wind and solar industrialists — along with their pseudo-environmentalist accomplices — are willing and eager to destroy it.

Constance Gee

Westport

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