Moe Lane

The wind ‘industry’ is apparently looking for more federal aid – actually, no, there’s nothing apparent about it.  They want more federal aid, they want it permanently – and they want it specifically allocated to them, and not as part of a nebulous ‘alternate energy’ package.  Otherwise, they’re afraid that they’ll go out of business. For the record: if your business plan requires – not benefits from; requires - an annual bailout from the federal government in order to function, then by definition you have a bad business plan.  Mostly because you are not actually in business; you are a parasite pretending to be a business.  I understand that this point has been obscured since the Democrats took Congress in 2007, but it bears repeating.  A lot of repeating.

Now that we’ve got that lesson in Capitalism 090 out of the way, let’s clear something up.  It may be that the 112th Congress may find it expedient to take into account the Left’s religious sensibilities on ‘green’ power.  If so, however, a basic appreciation of this country’s secular ideals demands that the Left gives up blocking its favorite environmental devil figure.  I refer, of course, to nuclear power generation.  To put it very bluntly: if they want to get the angels of wind farms then they have to enthusiastically support the demons of nuclear power plants.  Note ‘enthusiastically:’ they’re going to have to actively and effectively oppose the antinuke scientific illiterates alongside the rest of us.  Because the USA is not going to reduce the amount of power that we generate every year if we don’t have to, and that is not negotiable.  The more reasonable green types need to accept that reality.

And if they don’t want to do that: well. I guess that they don’t really love Mother Gaia all that much, after all.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

No, really.

One that I can think that we can all get behind:

The first U.S. offshore wind farm, a giant project 5 miles/8 km off the Massachusetts coast, was approved on Wednesday after years of opposition involving everyone from local Indian tribes to the Kennedy family.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave the green light for the 130-turbine, 420-megawatt Cape Wind project in Horseshoe Shoal, Nantucket Sound, in what supporters considered a huge step forward for renewable energy in the United States.

“This project fits with the tradition of sustainable development in the area,” Salazar said in Boston.

What it didn’t do was fit with the tradition in the area of treating every whim of the Kennedy clan as a signed directive from God, but that deference died with Teddy.  So enjoy the view, ye remaining scions of Hyannis Port! – and if the image on the horizon appears at times to resemble that of the Hawaiian Good Luck Symbol, well, take it as a reminder that not even a Kennedy can stop the march of Progress forever.

Especially not the current crop of them.  And people wonder why Americans don’t trust dynastic thinking…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I mean, now that it’d no longer obscure the view of one of the most powerful Senators in the Democratic party, and all that.  I hear that there’s a market for the power.

Although to answer Glenn: for some strange reason, the kind of wind source that he brings up almost never seems to drive any kind of useful work…

It’s amazing what they don’t mention in the news these days:

Wind Capital Group, led by President Tom Carnahan, said Monday it has closed on financing for Missouri’s largest wind energy development.

The lenders, led by Nord/LB, Bayern LB, Rabobank, Santander and Union Bank, are providing $240 million in debt facilities to support the construction and operation of the proposed Lost Creek Wind Project in DeKalb County, Mo. The debt facilities consist of a construction loan, term loan and letter of credit.

The project also is seeking $90 million in aid through the federal stimulus package.

Like, for example, that ‘seeking’ in this context effectively means ‘calling up your brother the Congressman’ (as Dana Loesch helpfully points out). Or that this project needs both stimulus money and a cap-and-trade bill to pass in order to survive (as 24thstate.com helpfully points out).

I’d ask why Russ Carnahan felt comfortable voting for legislation that would directly benefit his brother, except that I already know that Democratic legacy politicians typically don’t believe that they have to obey the rules that they expect the rest of us to follow.  Given the incredible amounts of deference that the rest of their party gives them, they may unfortunately have a bit of a point.

Moe Lane

PS: Ed Martin’s running in that district.

Crossposted to RedState.

So now’s a great time to bring up the Cape Wind wind farm project again (some background on the topic here). As near as I can tell, the Globe got this one in before the first spadeful of Virginia earth got put on former Senator Kennedy’s coffin:

The proposed offshore wind project has sustained more than seven years of heated debate; political maneuvering, including some by the late Senator Edward Kennedy, a project opponent; and environmental review. It now awaits a decision from the Department of the Interior — the last major regulatory hurdle its developers must clear for the project to move forward. As the country’s first proposed commercial offshore wind farm, and the only project of its kind this far along in the approval process, Cape Wind could open the door for developers to harness the vast wind energy resource along the nation’s eastern seaboard. The approval could make Massachusetts the trailblazer of a power source that is an essential part of the country’s strategy to address global warming and to achieve energy security.

(Via Newsbusters, via Instapundit**) That’s the thing about defending things until your dying breath: if you’re good enough at it, people eventually settle down to wait until you have one. (more…)

The Cape Wind matter is one that I mentioned here – essentially, Ted Kennedy is enthusastic about wind farms, except when they’re within view of his luxurious Nantucket estate – and, via RedState diarist Vladimir (be sure to check out his Louisiana coverage) we get the report that one of President Bush’s last acts was to green-light said project… thus giving the new President a subtle, nasty, and frankly quite deserved headache.  More on it here: it should be quite amusing to see the fallout on this one.

Well, they were more polite about it than the title suggests, but the sentiment is real:

Joseph P. Kennedy II, whose father Robert F. Kennedy championed Native American rights, is at war with a band of Navajo Indians.

The Cameron Chapter of Navajo Nation is charging that Kennedy, president of Citizens Energy Corp. and its for-profit business Citizens Wind, is trying to seize control of a proposed wind farm on the tribe’s reservation on Gray Mountain in northern Arizona.

“Kennedy’s actions have single-handedly obstructed project development, delaying much-needed income and jobs for our nation,” said Edward Singer, president of the Navajos’ 1,500-member Cameron Chapter.

In a letter to Kennedy earlier this month, Singer accused Kennedy of using his “political connections” to take control of the project.

“If you are honestly committed to helping communities such as ours, please stop interfering with the Cameron Chapter so that we can move forward with the development of our Navajo Wind Project,” Singer wrote. “Instead, we suggest you support wind development elsewhere, including the Cape Wind Project in Massachusetts.”

It’s that last sentence about Cape Wind that indicates that the gloves are off on this one, and many people reading this are nodding in agreement. (more…)