SINKING IN
BUREAUCRACY
these huge national parks like Yellowstone, and there just aren’t areas
like that here. This is what we have
here,” Parker said. “Why would you
destroy that, you know?”
This and other arguments —
from destruction of property values, ruination of a lucrative tourist trade and desecration of sacred
Native American vistas — have
gained opponents purchase in the
courts at various turns.
And while much of the resistance has emanated from middleand working-class folks at the rim
of the sound, there is little question that the effort to derail Cape
Wind has also been helped — and
prolonged — by deep-pocketed
critics in the tonier compounds of
Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket,
though in some cases, that opposition has foundered. The late
Walter Cronkite, the esteemed
news anchor and property owner
on Martha’s Vineyard, for example, was an early opponent of the
project, appearing in local television ads funded by critics of Cape
Wind before reconsidering his
stance and ultimately supporting
it before his death.
Recently appointed Secretary
of State and former Democratic
senator from Massachusetts John
HUFFINGTON
03.10.13
“I’VE DEDICATED A DECADE
OF MY LIFE FOR THIS FIGHT.”
Kerry — a chief architect of climate legislation on Capitol Hill
and a staunch supporter of clean
energy — questioned the project
for years, arguing in 2007, for example, that “You can’t just have
someone plunk something down
wherever the hell they want.”
Kerry eventually lent his support to the project as well, but
his early reticence echoed the opposition of the Kennedy family,
whose compound in Hyannisport,
just down the road from Craigville
Beach, looks directly out onto
Horseshoe Shoal.
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy,
whose bona fides as a Democrat
and supporter of environmental
issues was unrivaled, was nonetheless an entrenched opponent
of the Cape Wind proposal. His
nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. —
himself an environmental attorney
and activist and founder of the
watershed protection group Waterkeeper Alliance — has argued
relentlessly against the project,
including in prominent op-eds in
The New York Times and, more recently, The Wall Street Journal.
But the chief underwriter of