From "Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound," by Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb
Via EnergyBiz Magazine
"But don't you realize, that's where I sail"
From the New York Times Book Review (it's an editor's choice)
...Considering the acid-rain-laced option of coal-fired energy and the lingering fear of nuclear power, wind would seem poised to become a major player in America’s alternative energy plans. But not off Cape Cod, if the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound can help it.
A great summer beach read about longtime summer beach communities, “Cape Wind” describes how the alliance managed to raise $4 million in one ballroom meeting at the Wianno Club, where the “grass-roots” campaign against the “industrial complex” of offshore “Cuisinarts” was kicked off by Douglas Yearley, a copper mining executive whose company was fined for killing birds in an acid runoff mishap in 2000, among other infractions. (With a 7,700-square-foot home on Nantucket Sound, Yearley, the 1993 Copper Man of the Year, was a sitting duck for wind-farm supporters when he praised “sustainable living” to a Massachusetts newspaper columnist.)
Maneuvering quietly behind each anti-wind-farm maneuver, despite his often green legislation and his labor backers’ support of the energy project, is the senior senator from Massachusetts, who is accused of bogging down the wind farm in Congress, where today, having been approved by Massachusetts, Cape Wind is going through its last regulatory review hurdles. When told that the turbines would be only barely visible on the horizon from Hyannisport, Ted Kennedy is quoted (secondhand) as replying, “But don’t you realize, that’s where I sail.” Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted environmentalist, makes a bizarre appearance on a radio talk show, lumping the wind power proponents in with “polluters.”
The Naib: Could you tell The Sietch readers in your own words what you feel is the main message of Cape Wind the book.
Wendy Williams: We all learned about the theory of American democracy in the 8th grade. This book is about how the game is really played in the 21st century. It is a story about money and power in modern America.
From "10 Questions-Wendy Williams Author Of Cape Wind The Book" at the Sietch Blog
