If you plan on attending the four-hour forum on offshore wind in Hyannis on Saturday, bring a healthy dose of skepticism and a lot of questions.
The “Close to the Wind” Summit is sponsored by opponents of the planned Dowses Beach offshore wind transmission cable. Each of the four “citizen groups” attending has some connection to the entangled web of anti-clean energy agendas emerging nationally in an attempt to kill offshore power.
It turns out, many of the people and organizations most outspoken in their opposition to offshore wind projects have agendas that have nothing to do with transmission cables, whales or the health of our fisheries.
Some of the speakers are there to fight offshore wind because they receive funding and research from coal, oil and gas companies. Some are there to kill clean energy because they are supported by the Koch brothers’ organizations, which profit when more natural gas gets burned. Others are millionaires with oceanfront views who don’t want to see tiny turbines, 25 or 30 miles away, spinning on the horizon.
According to the event’s organizers — which include Save Greater Dowses Beach, the Falmouth Heights Maravista Neighborhood Association and Barnstable Speaks — speakers are coming from a group called Green Oceans in Rhode Island, the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association of Maine, ACK for Whales of Nantucket and Protect Sandbridge Beach of Virginia.
Some of these groups have relied on questionable science — one of the groups coming to Hyannis listed a psychiatrist as its marine science expert — and misleading assertions as part of a national effort to derail offshore wind. Unfortunately, people of good faith sometimes believe misleading attempts to recruit them into the fight against offshore wind. For example, one of the most successful tactics used by members of the groups appearing Saturday is that offshore wind kills whales, for which there is no evidence.
These groups purposefully make it hard to determine who funds them. But once you start pulling strings, the sweater unravels. This begs the question, what is the objective of groups pushing false narratives?
One clue is the involvement of organizations that support more offshore oil and gas drilling — and have worked closely and funded Nantucket groups whose real concern appears to be their oceanfront views. The Nantucket opponents of wind cite concerns for right whales — but appear at events with David Stevenson, a former Dupont executive whose Caeser Rodney Institute is funded by fossil fuel interests and supports more oil and gas drilling.
Most of us don’t have hours to spend determining what exactly the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association ties are with the Koch brothers and a lawsuit seeking to limit government agency oversight of fishing — and by precedent, all kinds of environmental oversight. But it’s an important question.
It is also fair to ask people who have traveled here from Virginia if their opposition to wind power — and their trip to Massachusetts — receives funding, guidance or research from the Ceaser Rodney Institute or fossil fuel-supported right-wing think tanks in Washington.
None of this calls into question the sincerity or concern of the residents who want answers about the transmission cable crossing Dowses Beach. It is their neighborhood, their town, and they should ask questions and get answers, just like their neighbors did in approving a similar cable in Centerville.
But we must not allow the oil and gas industry to use misinformation to slow down or kill projects that are desperately needed to stop climate change from devastating our oceans, fisheries, coastlines and the lives and health of our children and grandchildren.
For decades, oil and gas companies lied to us about what their products were doing to our planet. We now know that fossil fuel company scientists were among the first to detail how carbon would hike the world’s temperature, melt its ice, raise its seas, destroy our beaches and worsen our weather. They just neglected to tell us.
They weren’t honest then, and they aren’t honest now. The truth is they’re hiding behind these “citizen groups” to keep us hooked on oil and gas.
Nick Krakoff is a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston-based nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.
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