For Cape Wind Opponents, Free Market Fundamentalism Replaces Coal-Funded Hot Air

In the recent Massachusetts gubernatorial debate, Gov. Deval Patrick (D) took heat from all three of his challengers over the Cape Wind project, a proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound that would be America's first offshore wind power plant.

For ten years, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound has delayed the project with wild-eyed attacks against the idea. At each turn, those attacks have proved unfounded (like feigned concern for whale populations that never come to Nantucket Sound) or greatly exaggerated ("eyesore" arguments and worries about birds).

Consider the funding behind opposition to Cape Wind, and the purported concern for wildlife in the Sound becomes downright bizarre. From the Greenpeace report titled "Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition":

Bill Koch founded the Oxbow Group in 1983 with settlement money from legal disputes over his shares of the family's business, Koch Industries. Oxbow is a privately-held energy corporation currently based in West Palm Beach, Florida. A conglomerate of two dozen companies, the Oxbow Corporation makes over $3.7 billion in sales annually, operates in nearly 20 countries, and employs more than 1200 people. The business is primarily centered on petroleum coke sales and coal mining, selling 10 million metric tons of petroleum coke and 8 million metric tons of steam coal each year. The company is also active in natural gas production...

Oxbow's Elk Creek Mine has been cited with over 2000 violations by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Oxbow has paid over $960,000 in fines since beginning the operation of the mine ten years ago. Of the 2000 violations, over 400 were deemed "significant and substantial," meaning they could result in injury or death...

Koch's opposition to Cape Wind surpasses his verbal protest and manifests in his role as chairman for a front group that he also supports financially. He has been one of the largest donors to The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, one of the most recognized adversaries of Cape Wind. Formed in 2001, the group collects donations in efforts to lobby against the building of the wind turbines, and in 2006 had raised $11 million, 90 percent of which has been donated by Koch and other wealthy opponents of the project. Koch, who serves as the group's co-chairman, has given at least $1.5 million to support the cause.

The clamorous, decade-long war of words between Bill Koch's front group and the Cape Wind developers went stale a long time ago. Thus the adult conversation about the wind farm among the four candidates for governor was a welcome change of pace. Gov. Patrick's opponents tried something new for Cape Wind opponents: they based their attacks on simple dollars and cents.

Gov. Patrick's opponents each attacked the economics of Cape Wind, which don't look quite as good without a national cap-and-trade policy to help encourage clean energy production. (A February 2010 study showing that Cape Wind would save ratepayers billions assumes that Congress will do the right thing and put a price on carbon pollution, but that hasn't happened yet.)

Still, getting serious about global warming and our addiction to foreign oil will not be free. And it is clear from polling that Massachusetts, like the country as a whole, is eager for change in our energy industry. Sadly, when candidates Charlie Baker (R) and Tim Cahill (I) came out against spending money on clean energy in the debate, they proved that they're not serious about breaking our fossil fuel addiction by investing in clean energy.

Baker argued that electricity policy must first do "no financial harm," and that Massachusetts doesn't need to worry about price volatility for fossil fuels. "Over the past ten years, the wholesale cost of electricity...has never gotten above 11 cents," Baker said. "It may be volatile, but not so volatile as it gets anywhere near the fixed price 18.7 [cents] plus 3.5 percent that we're talking about here for Cape Wind."

Cahill echoed the Republican's doublespeak, calling for Massachusetts to "get out of the subsidy and the tax credit business" because "we are not gonna solve global warming ourselves, but we're gonna put our state at a tremendous disadvantage if we try to lead the way" on clean energy. Cahill insisted that the free market should sort out electricity.

It may be a clever political code, but each man is saying the same thing: we want the cheapest energy we can buy, and damn the pollution.

That type of free market fundamentalism is completely divorced from what Americans want for our energy future. But at least it's more honest than the faux environmentalism from the Koch-fueled yacht-set.