Posthuman Blues

Windfarms -- Blight or Blessing?

"The Cape Cod Wind Project was proposed in 2001 for Nantucket Sound. It will consist of 130 wind powered turbines, each 40 stories tall. Together, they will generate enough electricity to power most of Cape Cod. The turbines will cover a 24-square-mile area of seafloor within view of the shoreline.

"'In terms of the opposition, the most emotionally felt argument . . . is that it would intrude on a very special place and the creatures that live there,' Kempton says. 'There appears to be something special about the ocean, a feeling that for many people underpins their opposition to the project.'"

Intruding on a very special place. How touching. And how unfortunately typical of the American ecological outlook, in which environmentally heinous smoke-belching power plants (kept considerately out of sight, of course) are preferable to ranks of quietly spinning windmills.

If these fuckwits on Cape Cod were truly enamored of the ocean they'd be embracing wind-power. But with consummate superficiality, they're shunning it in favor of technologies that have already begun to render the oceans lifeless.

These people don't deserve beachfront property; let them risk their necks in Iraq if maintaining the fossil-fueled status quo is so integral to keeping their beloved view unimpaired.