NIMBY: Nantucket Sound

Not In My Back Yard!

It's a common reaction from those who support an idea in theory, but oppose the same thing if it'll be up close. If you live on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, you've paid through the nose to buy your back yard, and may not be happy about seeing anything not suitably quaint:

When you add the tendency to this map of the heavily tourist dependent area, you get an idea why a proposal to go green with an offshore windmill farm met with opponents' "go to hell" reactions.

Audio: CBS Radio's Osgood File 4/12/10.

The NIMBY crowd wasn't happy with Secretary Salazar's decision:



Boston's WBUR serves the impacted area and has archived coverage.

The station is also home base for Here & Now, which presented WBUR's Business & Technology reporter Curt Nickisch and Cape Wind president Jim Gordon with instant reactions to the news.

Audio: BBC, PRI & WBUR's Here & Now 4/28/10, Host: Robin Young.

In Europe, where energy alternatives are already considered mainstream, blades began turning at Germany's first offshore wind farm Tuesday (4/27/10)..., 45 kilometres (28 miles) off the coast in the North Sea, with 12 turbines producing energy for 50,000 households... None of whom will see the wind farm over the horizon.

The turbines, near the North Sea island Borkum, are each 150 metres high (a bit taller than the ones proposed for Cape Cod), produce 12 megawatts of power and the total cost of the project was 250 million euros (332 million dollars). The project, financed by Germany's number one energy provider, aims to achieve a capacity of 25,000 megawatts in offshore wind energy by 2030.. But it's also designed as a "test ground" and Germany's Environment Ministry will closely examine the impact on local species.

Thomas Dolby's "Windpower" was a hit in 1982 Deutschland...
Not so much in the USA.