Going Green Shouldn’t Be Such A Lengthy Process

http://www.lockergnome.com/greaterworld/2011/01/13/going-green-shouldnt-be-such-a-lengthy-process/

When I was a child, I used to hear about the need for expedited decisions, and each time they came, there was another side that was stating that if these decisions were expedited some pertinent information might be completely overlooked.

The idea always won the day, because there are so many old saws about being careful that almost everyone knows that standard wisdom calls for waiting. Look before you leap. To talk without thinking is to shoot without aiming. Those are just two of a throng about being careful and thorough, while I could only think of one that goes the other way, that putting too much time into thought is not a good thing. Strike while the iron is hot.

Unfortunately, when it comes to growing green in this nation, many times we have stones that are not rolling, gathering lots of moss, and not getting accomplished what any sane person knows needs to be done.

A perfect example is the article this day in EarthTechling, concerning the offshore wind project on Nantucket Sound which tells about the permits just now being received after a decade of effort.

Of course, we are also told that Cape Wind, as it is known, will also have to deal with an untold number of lawsuits blocking it.

The big, controversial offshore wind power project on Nantucket Sound won its final OKs from the federal government – a “Section 10 Permit” from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers required to work in navigable waters, and approval from the Environmental Protection Agency that the project complies with the Clean Air Act.

The approval process was an odyssey for Cape Wind – “a decade’s effort of our company and 17 Federal and State agencies striving to harness America’s abundant, inexhaustible offshore wind resource,” as company President Jim Gordon put it.

Late last year, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities approved Cape Wind’s deal to sell its electricity to National Grid – and it’s that aspect of the project that is now under legal assault from activists. In any case, the company is aiming to have power coming ashore from the 130-turbine wind plant in 2013, after a construction process that it said will create 1,000 jobs.

This is simply stupid. We all know how the government can subvert the best of things, such as when the individual’s house was recently taken in order to give it to a corporation through the abuse of eminent domain, but this is not the taking of any individual owner’s land.

What is being contested is the ability to block necessary progress because it offends the sensibilities of some, such as when wind turbines are put up and the view of the see is ruined (their take on it).

This process should have been swift and without any notice, as it is for the public good. Being able to have power for houses, businesses, and street lamps is a good thing, and getting that power cheaply while reducing the smog in the air is better still. Removing the blight that is strip mining of coal, or the import of oil from OPEC nations, both which do irreparable harm to the nation in ecological and monetary terms.

It is a matter of priority, and some would say, national security, because of the debt we are incurring. Why not create jobs, long term sources of electricity, and remove strain from the economy and ecology, by removing considerations for the few, instead of doing what improves the lives of the many?

That is what democracy is all about.

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