There has been a nasty tone creeping into the comments of Cape Wind supporters now that they sense victory is close. It’s a tone of mockery for the idea that spiritual values could really be the motive behind the opposition to the 130 450 foot -high wind turbines proposed for Nantucket Sound..
Commenting on the blog reaction to his latest pro-Wind Farm op-ed one longtime supporter characterizes the arguments based on the aesthetics, the intangibles, things of the spirit as “inane.” He congratulates the one blog in favor of making p ractical use of that empty body of water for getting the discussion “back to reality.”
An editorial in the Boston Globe calls the Wampanoags’ challenge to Cape Wind based on spiritual values a “cynical gimmick” and “laugh-out-loud bogus.”
The suggestion in such commentary is that the objection to the industrialization of the waters south of the Cape based o n spiritual values is not credible and must be a devious coverup for other reasons. But aside from a handful of people with waterfront views who might in fact worry about their property values, what other motives would those who have cited aesthetic concerns have? Perhaps a perverse insistence on holding up progress (as suppporters see it) for no good reason at all?
It’s pathetic that the only locals whose concern for the intangibles is being taken seriousl– seriously enough to be vetted by government– is that of the native Americans, as if they are our designated bearers of the spiritual. And according to the piece in the Globe, even those could not really be about things of the spirit. Must be a put-up job, a front for other, darker motives.
I thought the validity of non-practical uses of nature had been long established. Hence, “America’s best idea” of Ken Burns’ recent documentary about national parks. Whether Nantucket Sound ends up industrialized, the argument for letting it remain unharnessed is not a different argument. The principle is the same.
Here on outer Cape Cod, more than half of our towns was set aside for a National Park about 60 years ago. The park became reality despite tremendous opposition on the part of locals, who at that time couldn’t see the uses of uselessness, the value of doing nothing with land and sea. It took us some time to get behind this idea, but now it’s such a deeply held value that somebody who wants to put up a large house in the park is widely regarded as an insensitive lout. But here too many people, progressive people concerned about climate change, regard the spiritual argument for leaving Nantucket Sound unharnessed as silly or, worse, a pretext.
Why should it be hard to take at face value here on Cape Cod, with our long history of caring about quality of life, that a lot of people really are concerned about the spiritual price of industrializing of Nantucket Sound?
It may be that we decide that the harnessing of the offshore wind will have such a favorable impact on climate change that we simply must pay that price, make that sacrifice. (I don’t happen to believe that it will, as I have often argued in this space.) It could be argued that an even greater spiritual good will be served with a non-polluting, “green” energy source. Great architecture and art were deemed necessary sacrifices in WW2.
But mocking spiritual objections makes light of the seriousness of the decision to be made, and dismisses traditional Cape Cod values. At least acknowledge that planting those turbines in Nantucket Sound would come with a big price tag in the form of considerable spiritual losses. The sacrifice, if it must be made, will be just that, a sacrifice of something of considerable value.
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