Monthly Archives: April 2014

Article 38: the sweet logic of passive solar

Monday night Wellfleet has a chance to do a sensible thing, vote for article 38 on the town meeting warrant, the Stretch Code. It speeds up the pace at which the building code is moving toward making houses more energy efficient. There has been an exemplary effort to Solarize Wellfleet, spearheaded by the Wellfleet Energy […]

NCAA unions: An end to the hypocrisy

I was in fan heaven a couple of weeks ago at the outcome of the NCAA basketball tournaments, the statistically miraculous double national championship for the University of Connecticut. I didn’t go to UConn, didn’t teach there, but I lived in Hartford when they began their rise to national fame in the 1980s, and to […]

Cape Cod Commission and the battle of Cape Cod

To borrow from a union song Pete Seeger used to sing, in the battle of Cape Cod, which side are you on? The battle of Cape Cod. It’s going on and we’re all in it, like it or not.   The perennially embattled Cape Cod Commission makes a game attempt in its mission statement to […]

Pilgrim 12 trial—Judge Cannone, how about a clue?

There’s no question who won and who lost in the recent Pilgrim12 trespassing trial. The defendants got a tap-on-the-wrist sentence, but it was pretty obvious, as reported in news stories, Pilgrim and the NRC were on trial—and found guilty. As Diane Turco, Cape Downwinders co-founder and a defendant said, “The verdict doesn’t matter; the truth […]

Senator Warren, where are you now that we need you?

Dear Senator Warren: Your Cape and Islands supporters love the work you are doing in DC levelling the playing field with corporations. But we are disappointed that you haven’t been stronger on the burning issue here, the closing down of Pilgrim nuclear power plant. We assume you are aware that all the towns on Cape […]

Oil spills and nuclear meltdowns are not accidents

On the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, along with a review of the still ongoing longterm effects, it was asked: what did we learn from this accident? Not enough, apparently. Spills continue; the huge 2010 BP spill is still fresh in mind. At what point do you begin to see these catastrophes […]

The rising tide of us

Robinson Jeffers, a misanthropic poet of the early part of the last century, preferred hawks to his own species. Though having to share the world with a mere 2 billion fellow humans (compared to our 7 billion), it was way too many for him. Wikipedia calls him an icon of the environmental movement, but he […]

Bags in Provincetown: why not do something that really makes sense?

Provincetown has put on its town meeting warrant a ban on single-use plastic bags. Stores will be required to furnish paper. The Cape tip community would be the first on the block to make this virtuous move. They would join Nantucket and that other Edge City, San Francisco. The only trouble is that paper, though […]