It took nine years of regulatory review before the federal government could manage to approve the nation's first offshore wind farm yesterday.

Adjacent to the wind farm story on the home page of the New York Times this morning was this headline: Oil Leak in Gulf of Mexico May Be 5 Times Initial Estimate .

It's hard to know where to start peeling apart all the layers of cognitive dissonance buried in that.


Rendering of the Nantucket Sound wind farm

In one of the most egregious examples of NIMBYism ever, the main objection



to the wind farm in question—located in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod in Massachusetts—was its impact on views, and the most outspoken voices in opposition were those of the prestigious Kennedy clan.



All that whining cost us many years of clean power generation, and also set back plans for several other offshore wind farms on the east coast that were in limbo waiting for the precedent to be set. Note also that these east coast sites have the additional benefits of relatively consistent wind, being located near population centers, reducing the need for long stretches of transmission lines.

Meanwhile Denmark has been building offshore wind farms for decades, and in 2007 wind accounted for one fifth of their electricity production.

What happened in Massachusetts is the exact opposite of rapid deployment—our best strategy for avoiding catastrophic climate change. And while the connections may be less explicit, the same pernicious dynamic is at play when, for example, a selfish minority torpedoes efforts to encourage compact development around transit investments, thereby impeding progress toward long-term, systemic reductions in transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

(More bad news: Josh tells me a renewable energy incentive—mainly for wind power projects—was scaled back by the legislature last year from a 100 percent sales and use tax exemption to a 75 percent exemption, soon-to-be 50 percent exemption.)

Are we ready to declare a National Energy State of Emergency yet?