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This is just another round of a fight that's been happening for over 20yr now. Offshore wind farms in the Cape Cod, Rhode Island and Long Island area have been

This is just another round of a fight that's been happening for over 20yr now. Offshore wind farms in the Cape Cod, Rhode Island and Long Island area have been a constant political football. Regardless of the pretext of any given action the the way things generally are is that the people who have a view they want to protect, the tourism industry and the hippie/nature/biology types are on the no-wind side and the climate types, green energy people, domestic energy and big business types are on the other. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes another side wins. But nobody ever gets a win streak long enough to bring anything to fruition. Everyone circle jerking about whatever the political/ideological cause of the minute is is missing the broader trend. This has nothing to do with national security, or Trump, or anything else in the past few years other than that being the pretext for whatever action was taken at this time. The area is well suited to wind power but the area but it's also chock full of rich people and moneyed interests that can afford to fight it, likely to the long term detriment of the region, but like locusts they will be gone and cashed out by then so they don't care. That's probably when these things will finally get built.

SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
It's not just another round of a fight. This is part of Trump's campaign to prove he's king of the US and everyone in the country has to do what he wants unless they pay him to do what they want. You need to completely reject the idea that Trump is a continuation of broad societal trends, or you're going to wake up one day to find that you're being arrested for calling him a locust.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  It's the wealthy and wealthy-ish (so like HN-tier) people of the boston-ny coastal areas who have no bigger problems than than hand wringing about some offshore windmills who are the locusts here. It just so happens that for this particular round the locusts have the head of the executive on their side. This is a long term ongoing debate that Trump basically walked into and picked the side that suited him for a few cheap political points. The battle lines were drawn long before he cared. The potential for resource (energy) extraction here is undeniable. That's why various parts of this area have been suggested for wind farms for so long. When the locusts have decimated the region and moved on and there is nobody left to fund the fight the resource extraction will happen. Because that's just the economically sensible thing to do. And without anyone to stand in the way sensible things tend to happen. In a sort of perverse "you are why the history books have the horrors they do" sort of irony, Trump is very much a continuation of the broad social trend wherein people in the US have less rights and their governments have more arbitrary power as the years go on. To ascribe the problem to a particular politician, as bad as said politician may (or may not) be is to deny that trend, which is a stupid thing to do. And just to be clear here, I am very much pro wind-farm and have been since before any of the current major political personalities were relevant.
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    I deny that what Trump wants is "political points" in the way the term has normally been understood. What he wants is for the leaders of this company to pay homage to him, giving him a nice gift and acknowledging that their business decisions are subject to his personal will. They're not as rich as Apple, so he'll probably accept something less than the literal gold bar Tim Cook gave him, but they certainly won't be allowed to resume construction just because they make good arguments for the project.

SpicyLemonZest 1y ago

It's not just another round of a fight. This is part of Trump's campaign to prove he's king of the US and everyone in the country has to do what he wants unless they pay him to do what they want. You need to completely reject the idea that Trump is a continuation of broad societal trends, or you're going to wake up one day to find that you're being arrested for calling him a locust.

potato3732842 1y ago
It's the wealthy and wealthy-ish (so like HN-tier) people of the boston-ny coastal areas who have no bigger problems than than hand wringing about some offshore windmills who are the locusts here. It just so happens that for this particular round the locusts have the head of the executive on their side. This is a long term ongoing debate that Trump basically walked into and picked the side that suited him for a few cheap political points. The battle lines were drawn long before he cared. The potential for resource (energy) extraction here is undeniable. That's why various parts of this area have been suggested for wind farms for so long. When the locusts have decimated the region and moved on and there is nobody left to fund the fight the resource extraction will happen. Because that's just the economically sensible thing to do. And without anyone to stand in the way sensible things tend to happen. In a sort of perverse "you are why the history books have the horrors they do" sort of irony, Trump is very much a continuation of the broad social trend wherein people in the US have less rights and their governments have more arbitrary power as the years go on. To ascribe the problem to a particular politician, as bad as said politician may (or may not) be is to deny that trend, which is a stupid thing to do. And just to be clear here, I am very much pro wind-farm and have been since before any of the current major political personalities were relevant.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  I deny that what Trump wants is "political points" in the way the term has normally been understood. What he wants is for the leaders of this company to pay homage to him, giving him a nice gift and acknowledging that their business decisions are subject to his personal will. They're not as rich as Apple, so he'll probably accept something less than the literal gold bar Tim Cook gave him, but they certainly won't be allowed to resume construction just because they make good arguments for the project.