When my friend Elizabeth came to visit me in Wellfleet for a weekend, one of the things she wanted to see was a “real” Cape Cod lighthouse. We drove over to Eastham and admired Nauset Light as the sun set. It had never occurred to me to take visitors there. But to Elizabeth, there was something about that red and white building that seemed emblematic of Cape Cod.
I’ve been thinking about that evening lately as I research stories about the development of wind power here. Barring some unforeseen federal policy change, there will be wind turbines built in the ocean east of the Outer Cape in the next decade or so. They will be so far from shore that it will be nearly impossible to see them from land. Nonetheless, plenty of people are concerned that these windmills represent a threat to the wildness of Cape Cod.
Some worry about a threat to fishing, and it may be that fishermen will lose access to fishing grounds around the turbines. And misinformation is fueling misguided fears that turbine construction is killing whales. Both concerns are rooted in the deeply held view of our National Seashore and the ocean around it as a precious, undisturbed reserve — a place where building anything represents an encroachment on something sacred.
I noticed this listening to Lisa Quattrocki Knight, the co-founder and president of the Rhode Island-based anti-offshore wind group Green Oceans, speak last winter in Osterville at a gathering whose name seemed to call for environmental protection: “Save Greater Dowses Beach.” The turbines south of Martha’s Vineyard, she said in a tone of disgust, are “bigger than any building in all of Boston.”
We have, of course, already encroached on our shores and ocean, which are hardly undisturbed. Parking lots, whale watch boats, oversand vehicles, and cargo ships all are aspects of the enjoyments and commerce we’re accustomed to. We are able to ignore these encroachments, though. We see them as unavoidable or even charming, in the case of the lighthouses. They’ve come to fit into our idea of the unspoiled Cape.
But the lighthouses were built to protect lives and livelihoods. Are wind turbines all that different? They could help protect us from the global shipwreck of climate change. Turbines may have some environmental downsides, but so do lighthouses. Their light can draw flocks of migrating birds, killing them, sometimes by the hundreds, as they strike the glass.
I’m not arguing against the existence of lighthouses, nor do I favor the unlimited proliferation of wind turbines. Every change to the environment needs to be studied, and if wind companies were allowed free rein without citizen input and governmental oversight, I would be very uneasy. There are plenty of questions to explore, and if wind companies behave badly, I will not hesitate to write about it. But I don’t think offshore turbines are a fundamentally nature-spoiling idea.
We have decided that lighthouses are worth having. Maybe one day we’ll feel the same way about turbines.
