Notes From an Environmentalist.
War of the Winds, Gloucester Massachusetts
The War of the Winds
Gloucester, Massachusetts
August 24, 2024
From the outside it was difficult to figure out the purpose of a boat rally scheduled for August 24th in Gloucester Harbor.
It was being organized by a loose coalition of organizations led by the Gloucester City Republican Committee, who wanted to elect Donald Trump.
But it also included fishermen who wanted to build on their recent legal victory that had banned the much- reviled federal fish observer program where the boat owners had to pay an observer $700 to spy on his operation. The program had been a central theme in the Hollywood film Coda that had depicted how a deaf fisherman had been put out of business by a callow young observer.
The fishermen were concerned about the future of the Gloucester fishing fleet, which had shrunk from hundreds of vessels to only 65, as the city’s working waterfront was being taken over by hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions.
But in the past few weeks the organization had been joined by groups that feared offshore wind farms would take over fishing grounds and by environmental groups concerned about the effects of windmills on birds, fish, and whales
In fact, anti-wind groups had sprung up like topsy up and down the East Coast. It turned out that a lot of them were supported by foundations funded by fossil fuels and the remaining Koch brother. Local police often had to restrain activists from disrupting licensing and information meetings in places like Newport and Nantucket.
Most of their environmental concerns were trivial compared with the overarching problem of climate change, others were contrived like the case of Martha’s Vineyard’s beached whale.
Northern Right Whales are critically endangered. Only 350 individuals remain. And, for several months scientists had been monitoring a young calf who had become entangled in lobster gear.
Researchers tried to disentangle her many times but had failed and they had to helplessly stand by as she became weaker and weaker as the ropes cut off circulation to her flukes. Finally, she couldn’t swim or eat and washed up dead, on Martha’s Vineyard.
Almost instantly social media was abuzz with the mashugena theory that the calf had somehow been killed by the installation of wind turbines and that wind advocates had tied a lobster trap rope to her tail to disguise the fact.
But the real problem was on the other side of the pond, where a third GE blade had just toppled into the sea on the Dogger Banks off England.
In fact, GE’s blades were dropping like flies.
GE had introduced their new wind turbine to great fanfare in 2019. They built their prototype in the Port of Rotterdam where it loomed over the city as high as the Eiffel Tower.
One of the 318-foot blades was shipped to the United States to be tested in Massachusetts’ new Clean Energy Center in the Charlestown Naval Yard.
Apparently, no one had bothered to measure the blade because when it arrived technicians discovered it was too long to fit in the building so they had to cut it in two.
The world was in a bind. 2024 had been the hottest year on record and more troubling would probably be the coolest year in rest of most people’s lives.
Countries needed offshore wind turbines so they could reach their clean energy goals by 2030. But the technology had advanced so fast without adequate testing that government agencies had to shut down both Vineyard Wind and the Dogger Bank wind projects even though they had been successfully producing good clean energy.
So, if the blades were so fragile they could collapse on a fine summer day with only the merest of zephyrs, what would happen during a Nor’easter or North Atlantic hurricane? We would soon find out.