While Mass Audubon's primary expertise is bird life, we also believe that other potential impacts are important and should be examined.

...as the reality of the largest proposed offshore wind plant in the world comes into sharper focus, it becomes clear that 130 massive wind machines spread across 24 square miles of the sound threaten not only marine life and wildlife but also public safety.

One can certainly concur with concerns about how our culture's fossil fuel combustion practices help accelerate the process of global warming—without uncritically agreeing that the intrusive nature of windpower technology is even a partial solution to the problem.
Editor's Note: Ted Williams' 'Wind Advisory' is available via the link below.

Your [Boston Globe] front page headline of March 29, "Audubon review supports wind farm" was a rush to judgment according to Vernon Lang, supervisor of Fish and Wildlife’s New England field office, the agency lead official on the Cape Wind proposal.
Editor's Note: This letter has been submitted to the Boston Globe.

It is not necessary to sacrifice the privilege of Massachusetts' magnificent coastline which sustains us. In allowing the destruction of an ecological sanctuary like Nantucket Sound we will fail in our commitment to uphold the public trust placed in us to protect our coastline for future generations.

Ipswich should be focusing on how to get the average kwh cost down to 10 cents or less, not wasting time on some politically correct marginal trifle that will do nothing to achieve electric rate relief.

If the good people of Florida would question the developers, the politicians who fast-track this project, the facts, and the integrity of the siting process with this type of intensity instead of attacking anyone who participates in the public process, this project would never be built.

Massachusetts has an ambitious goal for renewable-energy development but no realistic plan or guidelines to reach it. The result is a free-for-all with the state lavishing money on wind-power development in the Berkshires, investors and other states benefiting from the largess, and Berkshire towns and residents left in the dark as to the real consequences for our community, our economy, and our beautiful mountains.
Editor's Note: Eleanor Tillinghast is head of Green Berkshires, Inc., an environmental group based in western Massachusetts.

Cape Wind is no more than a feel-good boondoggle, cleverly capitalizing on America's emerging right-headed desire to develop alternative energy sources.

Magical interviews science editor and writer Eric Rosenbloom for answer to some of Cape Wind's pesky and misleading promises.

As a boat angler who haunts Nantucket Sound, I'm especially concerned about its fish resources. Yet whenever I have sought solace from Cape Wind and the Corps in the form of cogent answers to my questions, I've gotten only what they hope to harness--wind.

Environmentalists have been promising for more than three decades that wind energy would be competitive if there was a "level playing field," but it survives only because the field has been tilted in its favor.

Last month, they [Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus] continued that tradition with a highly personal and dishonest attack on me for opposing Cape Wind -- a massive offshore wind farm that -- as a result of careless siting -- will ruin the livelihoods of hundreds of Cape Cod's treasured commercial fishing families by evicting them from their primary fishing grounds. That boondoggle, which requires a quarter billion dollars in government subsidies and effectively privatizes 24 square miles of public trust lands used annually by 3 million boaters and tourists, will cause a host of other injuries, including serious ecological damage and a billion dollars in economic loss to surrounding communities and will pose a dangerous navigational hazard to air and marine traffic.

CRITICS OF PROPOSED US offshore wind farms have recently lauded efforts to develop deep-water offshore wind energy technologies that would allow wind farms to be built far from shore. They suggest that advances in research and development are proceeding at such a rapid pace that thousands of wind turbines could soon be operating off the northeast coast without encroaching on anyone's view or posing any threat to the environment. Clarification about the current state and potential of deep-water offshore wind energy appears timely.

The Nantucket Sound region is a fragile marine environment on the active list under consideration for sanctuary status by the federal government. Nantucket Sound exists in the North Atlantic Flyway. It is a habitat to endangered species protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The amendment to restrict placement of towers within 1.5 nautical miles of shipping traffic is a safety amendment, not a political ploy.

All of us need periodically to experience wilderness to renew our spirits and reconnect ourselves to the common history of our nation, humanity and to God. The worst trap that environmentalists can fall into is the conviction that the only wilderness worth preserving is in the Rocky Mountains or Alaska. To the contrary, our most important wildernesses are those that are closest to our densest population centers, like Nantucket Sound.

Unless Massachusetts residents take on the challenge, they will see millions of dollars transferred from their pockets through higher prices for electricity and taxes to the pockets of companies that own wind farms. Billions of capital investment dollars will be spent on projects that produce tiny amounts of electricity, electricity that is unreliable and low in quality and value.

These examples show that offshore wind technology is advancing so rapidly that sacrificing Nantucket Sound for a project like the one currently being proposed is shortsighted. In the near future, the public could get the same benefits from building an offshore wind plant farther out to sea with far fewer negative impacts, and at the same time avoid being saddled with what may well become an obsolete technology.

In this exclusive Q & A for RenewableEnergyAccess.com, Mr. Pratt offers some of his insight gained toward advancing renewable energy at both the state and national level. He articulates some current hurdles and possible solutions for renewable energy, gauges the industry's pulse, and charts the course ahead. "The increasing emphasis on biofuels may be one area of agreement which could help to build coalitions in red and blue states, including farmers and the agricultural sector, the automotive industry, environmentalists and renewable energy advocates."