Arts, Faculty of
Anthropology, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Good, Danielle L.
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
This paper discusses the politics of the first proposed offshore wind turbine development in the United States, Cape Wind. I analyze two sides of this conflict; 1) How residents’ protests of the turbines have problematized large scale renewable energy projects by equating the politics of Cape Wind to capitalist exploitation of land and resources. The ways residents have protested Cape Wind draws parallels between building turbines and exploitation of local resources, something that is more commonly associated with the development of traditional carbon-based fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. 2) I argue that the residents who opposed the project contributed to the developer’s ability to build in Nantucket Sound by contributing to a process of rendering the area technical (Li 2007). My goal is to provide insight into the particular ways the wind and Nantucket Sound has been made the target of development, and also to show how a certain class of Cape Cod residents reacted to the project.
ABSTRACT HORIZONS AND CONCRETE WINDS: THE POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE CAPE WIND PROJECT by Danielle L. Good B.A., Wellesley College, 2011 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Anthropology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) May 2013 © Danielle L. Good, 2013 ii Abstract This paper discusses the politics of the first proposed offshore wind turbine development in the United States, Cape Wind. I analyze two sides of this conflict; 1) How residents’ protests of the turbines have problematized large scale renewable energy projects by equating the politics of Cape Wind to capitalist exploitation of land and resources. The ways residents have protested Cape Wind draws parallels between building turbines and exploitation of local resources, something that is more commonly associated with the development of traditional carbon-based fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. 2) I argue that the residents who opposed the project contributed to the developer’s ability to build in Nantucket Sound by contributing to a process of rendering the area technical (Li 2007). My goal is to provide insight into the particular ways the wind and Nantucket Sound has been made the target of development, and also to show how a certain class of Cape Cod residents reacted to the project. iii Preface The research for this thesis was approved by the University of British Columbia Behavioral Research Ethics Board (BREB). The certificate of approval number is H12-00911 under the title Sites Unseen. This research was funded in part by the University of British Columbia Faculty of Arts Graduate Entrance Scholarship, and was conducted under the advisement of Dr. Shaylih Muehlmann. The author conducted all research, data collection, and analysis for this thesis. Danielle L. Good is the sole author of this manuscript, no portion of which has been previously published. iv Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ..................................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ...........................................................................................................................v Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ vi 1. An Ill Wind .......................................................................................................................1 1.1 Abstract Waters ..........................................................................................................3 2. Striking Wind in Cape Cod .............................................................................................6 2.1 Stochastic Winds ........................................................................................................7 2.2 Making Space for Wind Power ................................................................................12 3. Encroaching on the Beach .............................................................................................19 3.1 Obstructed Views .....................................................................................................21 3.2 Visualizing Energy Production ................................................................................23 3.3 An Ardent Defense of the Sound .............................................................................28 Conclusions .............................................................................................................................36 Bibliography ...........................................................................................................................39 v List of Figures Figure 1. Map of Cape Wind site .............................................................................................16 Figure 2. Simulation of the view from Osterville Bridge, MA ................................................20 Figure 3. Flights over Nantucket Sound ..................................................................................32 Figure 4. Map of alternative sites ............................................................................................34 vi Acknowledgements The acknowledgements, I have learned, are simultaneously the most difficult and highly anticipated portion of writing my M.A. thesis. I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to those who have supported me morally, financially and academically in the completion of my Masters. Without the picturesque room and welcoming attitude Sandy and Sean provided for me in Cape Cod, I’m sure that my time in the Cape would not have been nearly as enjoyable or productive. I am grateful to them, as well as to all those who agreed to speak with me about Cape Wind on both sides of the issue. Many people provided support, encouragement and academic advisement throughout the course of my work. Most especially, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Shaylih Muehlmann who provided keen guidance and counseling throughout my program of study. I hope to continue to benefit from her mentorship in future endeavors. I could not be more appreciative of her help, and I’m so glad I have had the opportunity to work with her. Also, Dr. Bruce Miller, whose sharp insights and quick turn-arounds facilitated my finishing on time. I will definitely miss chatting at length with Dr. Miller at graduate student functions about the East Coast, sports, and school. Dr. Carole Blackburn, my external reader, also contributed greatly to this work by offering constructive comments and a novel take on my thesis. Many thanks to Dr. Gaston Gordillo and Dr. Leslie Robertson who not only taught amazing and challenging graduate courses, but also were always friendly and supportive figures outside of my committee. My friends and family kept me in (almost always) high spirits as I completed this project. Many thanks to Nell and Jordan, who allowed me to conveniently escape back to the U.S. on occasion in order to partake in good beer, some serious cooking, and lots of card vii games with great people. Also, to Megan, whose French accent I couldn’t get enough of and who has allowed me to go to places in Vancouver I would have totally missed- like the pretty par but very convenient 20 percent of sushi joint that can only be found by visual cues. I look forward to seeing where your archeology endeavors take you, and I particularly hope they take you to a number of tropical islands I can visit. I cannot even scrape the surface of all the things my roommate and partner in crime, run/walking, dog watching, neurotic breaks and sometimes complaining contributed to my time in Vancouver. Although she got me evicted from the first place we ever lived together, Lauren also managed to make our next apartment an amazing working environment and pretty much the best living situation I could hope for again, ever. I also will always have a special place in my heart for my adopted nephew Eli. His parents, too, contributed much to my time in Vancouver- they never failed to make me laugh, feed me or allow me to steal their car at my leisure. Juli was the best garage sale partner in the universe and Dan dutifully did not complain, even after many a long Saturday of bargain shopping. Also, Clayton, who not only helped me transport an endangered species across national borders, but also continued to hang out with me afterwards. I know Dan and Clayton are up to great things, and I hope we can share many an IPA together when our paths cross in the future. My mother and her partner, Zahoor, are the most supportive and loving parents I could hope for, even from afar in Texas. My mother has never tired of proof reading and always tolerates my most high strung and irrational behavior. She always let me know how proud she is of me, especially when I was most unsure of my path. Finally, Rawley, who I adore and who stuck with me all the way until the end. 1 1. An Ill Wind In 2005, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wrote an editorial titled “An Ill Wind Off Cape Cod” for the New York Times proclaiming his support of wind power as a form of renewable energy. However, his support came with one major caveat. The wind turbines- giant visual markers of industrial development- had to be placed appropriately. They would not, he suggested, be welcome in the “pristine” landscape of Yosemite National Park. Nor should they be erected in Nantucket Sound, a similarly valuable and idealized swath of land (R. Kennedy 2005). The “Ill Wind” the editorial described was Cape Wind, the first proposed offshore wind turbine project in the United States. The project called for 130 turbines to be situated in Nantucket Sound, a body of water directly between the vacation getaways of Nantucket Island, Martha’s Vineyard Island, and the Cape Cod peninsula. Since the wind power project was first proposed in 2001, a decade-long, highly-publicized battle has ensued over Cape Wind. Not one of the 130 turbines has been built. In 2011, six years after Kennedy’s editorial ran and ten years after the project was proposed, I joined a crowd gathered in North Boston’s historic Charleston Navy Yard to hear Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior under President Obama, announce the details of the Cape Wind project’s way forward. Salazar announced that the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement had approved a construction and operations plan for the 468-megawatt project (LeBlanc 2011). After Salazar’s announcement, a representative of Cape Wind Associates, the company developing Cape Wind, stated that construction would start as early as the fall. “As early as the fall” of 2011 seemed 2 oxymoronic given the years of fighting over the turbines that had preceded the press conference, but it was the closest the project had come to having a start date. I conducted research on Cape Wind in two phases. The first was from June 2010 to March 2011. I made most of my contacts through the alumnae association of my alma mater, Wellesley College. While this gave me access to some of the very elite residents of Cape Cod, it left me without many interviewees representing other demographics on the Cape. My second stay in Cape Cod was from May until August of 2012. During this time I lived in Centerville, a few miles from Hyannis, Massachusetts, the “downtown” of Cape Cod. In total, I conducted 12 formal interviews and had countless informal conversations about Cape Wind. Here, I will draw on my interview material, as well as publicity materials from organizations fighting over Cape Wind, and media coverage of the conflict. In what follows I focus on two of the groups I encountered while conducting my research. A multitude of parties have stakes in the project, including fisher people, two Wampanoag tribes (the Aquinnah and Mashpee), developers and volunteers with various preservation nonprofits, just to name a few. Some of these groups are still actively protesting the project. Commercial fishers and the Wampanoag tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) remain involved in two of the four ongoing court cases against Cape Wind (Toensing 2013; Zeller 2013). However, throughout my fieldwork I have had the closest contact with seasonal and well-to-do residents of the Cape, some of whom worked with the organization The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, which formed in protest of Cape Wind. I also conducted hours of conversational research with representatives of the Clean Power Now organization which 3 was formed to support the development of renewable energy in Cape Cod, but ended up becoming a national organization favoring renewable energy. In this paper I analyze how residents’ protests of the turbines have problematized large scale renewable energy projects by equating the politics of Cape Wind to exploitation of local land and resources. The ways residents have protested Cape Wind draws parallels between building turbines and prospecting, land grabbing and resource extraction, all of which are more commonly associated with the development of traditional carbon-based fuels like coal, oil and natural gas than with renewable energy like wind. I argue that these insights into the politics of developing renewable energy projects offer a critique, not simply of wind as a power form itself, but also of the ways developers targeted Cape Cod for wind development. However, I also contend that the residents who opposed the project contributed to the developer’s ability to build in Nantucket Sound. 1.1 Abstract Waters Cape Wind is to be constructed in federal waters which begin three miles offshore of any coastal state in the U.S. In one of my earliest interviews, I was alerted to the fact that Massachusetts, with its many small islands, had several pockets of federal waters by a woman protesting the turbines who chided me after I asked her about the strong winds in Nantucket Sound: …the developers are going into Nantucket Sound, onto Horseshoe Shoal simply because it is in federal waters where there are no regulations governing development. And they know that if they were in State waters they would likely be shot down by the far more restrictive zoning laws that we have in the Commonwealth [Massachusetts]. And they would certainly not want to do it on land because they would be hard pressed to get 4 permitted for 40-story skyscrapers on Cape Cod. And even if they were, then they would have to pay property taxes, which they don’t want to do. Her reaction hastily corrected what she saw as a common misunderstanding about why Cape Cod was chosen for the project. She wanted me to know that, in her opinion, the siting had less to do with wind in the area and more to do with the relative ease of building in federal waters. The founder of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, an organization opposed to the turbines has shared this view in comments made to reporters: Developers are doing much what 19th century speculators did in the West […]. They are finding tracts of land, tracts of water, recognizing that there are no regulations governing usage or development, sticking a shovel in it and saying, ‘I’m going to take this and I'm going to make money off of it.’ (Neal 2009) Just like speculators in the historic West, developers have proceeded under the assumption that the federal waters near Massachusetts are available for the taking. Henri Lefebvre writes about such spaces, which become vulnerable to capitalist exploitation, when he characterized the space of capitalism as “abstract space” (1991). Abstract space is the space of instrumental rationality, fragmentation, homogenization, and, most importantly, commodification (Schmid 2008). These spaces are defined by abstract qualities, including size, location, and value. Drawing on Lefebvre, in what follows I conceive of spaces as socially and politically produced. Abstract spaces like federal waters are not given; they have to be actively made. The waters off Cape Cod were never actually empty spaces up for grabs, and similarly the winds that blow in Nantucket Sound have not always been conceived as a reason for Cape Cod to be valuable. In order to create Nantucket Sound as the site of the Cape Wind project, certain characteristics, like the value of windiness, must be emphasized. These characteristics are highlighted through the elision of other features of Nantucket Sound. Both Cape Wind 5 developers and residents opposed to the project participated in these strategic elisions, but with different aims. The developers aimed to depoliticize the project in order to successfully permit and build in Nantucket Sound. The upper-class resistance, however, aimed to frame their opposition in a way that was based in local and environmental concerns in order to distract from their largely class based claims to Nantucket Sound. My analysis is guided by Tania Li’s work, The Will to Improve. Li explores the messy space, the so-called “witches brew,” where development intentions, actions and consequences collide with the situated agency of the subjects they aim to reform (2007:36). What results, according to Li, is not predictable, but inevitably leads to changes in landscapes and communities as well as in the development regimes themselves (2007). Li provides a window into how spaces like Nantucket Sound are made abstract in her analysis of development regimes. My goal is to provide insight into the particular ways the wind and Nantucket Sound has been made the target of development, and also to show how a certain class of Cape Cod residents reacted to the project. In the first section, my focus is on the development of wind power and how companies have encountered the difficulties of using wind as an energy source. The second section covers the unpredicted effects of proposing a turbine farm in Nantucket Sound, an area well known for its picturesque resort appeal. 6 2. Striking Wind in Cape Cod Upon arriving at the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound’s office in downtown Hyannis, I was greeted by a chipper secretary and the organization’s communications officer. Aside from them, the office was empty. Cubicles were tacked with images of protestors, newspaper articles and giant maps of Cape Cod, but the desks were unattended. Sitting down in a back room with a closed door, the communications officer, whom I had come to interview, started our discussion by exclaiming that Cape Cod was the “Saudi Arabia of wind.” This phrase was so startling to me that I asked her who had come up with it. She looked at me seriously and said, “Everyone uses it, even Obama has said it.” While I could not find proof that Obama had indeed called Cape Cod the Saudi Arabia of wind, I did find newspaper articles that used the phrase in reference to Cape Cod (Burkett 2003). Saudi Arabia has the world’s second largest oil reserve and about one fifth of the world’s total oil (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2010). To compare Cape Cod to Saudi Arabia implies the area is one of the windiest places in the world. But it also highlights uneasiness with the way wind is being developed. Saudi Arabia is well known to be an authoritarian country with a command economy. They tightly control their oil exports and have leveraged their oil wealth against the United States in the past (Ottaway and Kaiser 2002). For proponents of wind energy, evoking Saudi Arabia may serve as a reminder of the precarious ties oil creates between the U.S. and the Middle East. But in my interview, an opponent to the project used the same comparison of “Saudi Arabia” to lay out a different concern over the parallels between oil production, a traditional “dirty” energy source, and wind energy production, a “clean” renewable energy source. In this section, I wish to 7 emphasize how wind has been commoditized as a power source akin to coal or oil. Two key factors in how wind is commoditized include the creation of wind as a “clean” energy source, and the emphasis on the value of windy places like Nantucket Sound. 2.1 Stochastic Winds Presented with the new opportunity to develop wind offshore, Cape Wind Associates, the company developing Cape Wind, has deployed expertise surrounding the commoditization of wind as a power source. Timothy Mitchell invokes expertise in his discussion of the politics of oil production and circulation. He writes, “the deployment of expertise requires, and encourages, the making of worlds that it can master” (Mitchell 2009:416). Expertise requires the construction of “an object” which must be managed through the deployment of specialist knowledge (2009:417). Mitchell pays particular attention to the material nature of an energy source in order to think through “the forms of agency and control” made possible by the commodity (Mitchell 2009:400,409). For example, coal mining led to large scale strikes due to the concentration of workers in mines where each worker was given control over a section of the mine. This dispersed mining expertise to coal miners, who were in close contact with the coal and each other (Mitchell 2011). Oil, on the other hand, was pumped rather than mined from beneath the earth’s surface. Once pumped, oil was in unusable form (crude oil) and required refining (Mitchell 2011). The different nature of oil led to a concentration of experts far away from oil fields. Engineers could plan out how to pump oil and chemists could plan to refine it from major cities in the U.S. while relatively few laborers worked the pumps in the Middle East. Wind, however, poses different issues due to its invisible yet tangible nature and widespread 8 availability. For Cape Wind Associates, wind must simultaneously be made legible and quantifiable, but also in limited supply and thus valuable. Wind is not contained in reserves to be drilled or mined like carbon based commodities. Rather, wind is comprised of invisible gas moving tangibly from areas of high pressure to low pressure. Wind occurs when the surface of the earth is heated unequally by the sun. The heat from the sun is absorbed by the earth’s surface, which then heats the air directly above an area. Because warmer air is less dense than cool air, the hot air rises and high pressure systems are created (Moncuquet 1998). These pressure systems cause wind to blow. Especially windy areas are the result of varied factors such as the angle at which sunlight hits the earth’s surface and whether the area struck by sunlight is open land, covered with vegetation, or under water (Lamb 2008). While these variables combine to produce constantly changing wind systems all over the world, they also form certain areas that are constantly windy. Off shore, scientists have noted that narrow straights and passes between islands tend to produce the most constant winds (Ocean Energy Council 2012). One woman I spoke to who worked on the engineering side of turbines pointed out this fact by explaining to me that “this problem [of turbine siting] is going to keep happening. Winds are always best near beaches, or, you know, up high in the mountains.” Power generation companies characterize wind as lacking predictability and controllability (Pimentel 2008; Hewson and Pressman 2009; S. Kennedy 2005). These factors draw on the physical phenomenon of wind described above, but additionally these characteristics allow wind to be commoditized because they problematize the abundance of wind, which is a world-wide phenomenon. The first characteristic, unpredictability, means 9 that the availability of wind is challenging to foresee. Wind turbines only produce electricity when they are spinning, which means they only create electricity when the wind is blowing (Shere 2011). Statistical modeling is used to predict when winds will be blowing in an area- but this only gives an idea of the electricity that will actually be produced by a turbine in a given locale. Those who follow New England’s weather regularly know the unusual degree to which wind patterns fluctuate from their predicted levels. The second characteristic, uncontrollability, is two-fold. Part of this “uncontrollability” stems from the inability to truly capture wind. Wind gusts defy containment, and thus cannot be stockpiled like oil, coal and natural gas. On top of this, wind power eludes control by generation operators. Wind speeds vary from instant to instant, which means power outputs from wind vary, as well. Uncontrollable power levels mean that wind, currently, cannot be the sole source of electricity for an area. With wind, there must always be an additional electricity source which responds to supply and demand “on an instantaneous basis” (IEC 2012:25; Petrinin and Shabaan 2012). Thus, wind power is “stochastic,” meaning electricity from wind has a random distribution that can be analyzed by complex statistics, but the amount of electricity that will be produced at any particular moment can never be predicted with certainty (IEC 2012:30). Wind is out of the control of consumers, while carbon fuels respond to consumer demand. Traditional power sources create electricity on demand, meaning the grid determines when, say, coal is fired to bring power to homes. Wind, along with other renewables, is not “deterministic” in the same way (IEC 2012:29; General Electric International 2008:1). In Texas, where wind has been integrated into the grid, the Electric 10 Reliability Council of Texas has observed that the wind forecasts tend to over-predict how much electricity will be produced, leading to discrepancies between supply of electricity and household demand that must be compensated for by traditional power plants (Forbes, Stampini, and Zampelli 2010; ERCOT 2013; Lapierre 2010). Cape Wind Associates has created expertise in wind power by making invisible and stochastic winds measureable and manageable. One of the first things Cape Wind Associates built in Nantucket Sound, long before the permitting process for the turbines finished, was a scientific monitoring station to collect data on the invisible winds. A manager of one of the companies that assisted Cape Wind Associates in this endeavor was quoted heralding the scientific data that the tower would collect on the Cape Wind Associates website: We are keenly interested in the process of gathering high-quality environmental data from the Horseshoe Shoal [Nantucket Sound] data tower. The availability of accurate, state-of-the-art, real-time data on winds, currents, and waves will help not only the long-term decision process for site permitting and engineering, but also will provide data of value to scientists, engineers, students, and managers in New England. - Dennis Aubrey, Woods Hole Group (Cape Wind Associates 2012) Given that winds are unpredictable, variable, and thus out of people’s control, Cape Wind Associates has strategically positioned itself as knowing how to harness the wind in a way that can effectively generate power for Cape Cod’s electricity needs. According to the company’s best estimates, the turbines in Nantucket Sound will produce three-quarters of the electricity Cape Cod residents currently require (Cape Wind Associates 2012). Cape Wind would contribute to lowering consumption of carbon based fuels; however it is a relatively small project given skyrocketing electricity demands in New England. For the developers, admitting that Cape Wind would provide back-up electricity to 11 coal plants, or that it would fail to meet even the immediate area’s electricity demands would hurt their political goal of having the turbine project permitted. Cape Wind Associates has fostered a rhetoric of “clean energy” that outweighs the potential drawbacks of wind as a power source. A supporter of the project told me that the turbines “are not just clean, they’re squeaky clean.” The idea of “clean” energy is based heavily on the illusion of separation between “dirty” energy like petroleum and coal and renewables like wind (Gillis 2013). In the words of the Conservation Law Foundation, Cape Wind has become about whether the U.S. will “choose to create a clean energy future, or to repeat our dirty energy past” (Kassel 2012). A representative from the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound pointed out the effectiveness in marketing on the part of an organization “Clean Power Now” that was heavily involved in advocating for Cape Wind. She told me flatly “Who would be against that? I mean what’s the inverse? Dirty power now?” Those opposed to the project did not separate what they saw as dirty politics from the clean power Cape Wind promised. However, Cape Wind Associates has excelled in “creating a world” to manage, that of wind power as a clean energy (Mitchell 2011). One of the reasons Massachusetts residents outside Cape Cod were so in favor of Cape Wind was because Cape Wind Associates made clean energy the particular issue at stake in the project. Seventy percent of Massachusetts residents were in favor of the project (Wirzbicki 2010). A neighbor in Cape Cod this summer told me about how proud she was of the students at Cape Cod community college (some of her son’s friends included) for getting involved in supporting Cape Wind. She said she knew several of the students who had 12 organized around Cape Wind well, so I asked her what sorts of reasons they gave for why the project was important. She told me they were not interested in old rich people ruining the earth for them by shutting down the U.S.’s first offshore wind project. Her comment reminded me of the prevalence of stickers in support of Cape Wind at my college during the most virulent years of protest. The stickers simply read YES in bold letters with an image of a turbine. Some YES stickers were still spackled around Cape Cod, stuck to sign posts and on the backs of laptops in the public library, even during my most recent visit. With no context for the project, saying no to clean power was not a popular proposition. The apposition of “ruining the earth” through shutting down Cape Wind by college protestors shows the effectiveness of Cape Wind Associate’s narrative of clean power. 2.2 Making Space for Wind Power Both people for and against the turbines in Cape Cod pointed out that in the coming years there would likely be an off-shore “land grab” for windy waters. Land grabs involve individuals, corporations or governments buying up large tracts of land for purposes like food production and, more recently, biofuel production (Borras, Saturnino, and Franco 2012). Some investors have claimed that land grabs are a beneficial form of agricultural development, but land grabs have mostly been criticized as negatively affecting local communities (Li 2011). The novelty of staking claims for turbines offshore is brought to light in using “land” instead of water. Large areas of water and ocean floor have never been built on in the scale of industrial turbine farms. While a system of buying or leasing land exists for terrestrial turbine farms, the system for permanently developing federal waters remains murky in the U.S. Not only were there no clear laws or regulations for siting Cape Wind, 13 there was difficulty deciding on which federal agency should oversee the permitting process. Laws changed mid-permitting to shift oversight from the Army Corp of Engineers to the Department of the Interior, dragging out what had already been described as a byzantine ordeal to allow the turbines to be built (Zeller 2013). The metaphor of a land grab is a useful one for understanding how people perceive Cape Wind Associate’s goals. Because wind is both spatially and temporally beyond human’s control wind is technically available anywhere (IEC 2012:28). Certain areas are prone to more windy bouts than others, but generally speaking wind is a global phenomenon. Returning to the “Saudi Arabia” reference, I found the U.S. as a whole has also been dubbed the “Saudi Arabia of wind” by many news sources, and one blog carefully chronicled how many times the saying had come up in reference to places from Maine to West Texas (Wind Task Force 2010). The long list of “Saudi Arabias” of wind illustrates wind resources are widely dispersed. An important part of the appeal of renewable energy sources, wind included, is their wide distribution. Part of the campaign for wind power in the U.S. has included moving towards “energy independence” in place of the current dependence on the Middle East for oil (Walsh 2013; M. Parker 2013). Wind power can be found at home, off the shore of places like Cape Cod. So while it can be argued that certain places are especially fit for wind power, this argument has to be made against a backdrop of a world where every place has wind. Thus wind must be actively constructed by wind developers as a commodity that is limited, measureable and harvestable, despite its stochastic and diffuse nature. 14 Companies like Cape Wind Associates have taken to “developing” wind power in a way which portrays wind as a harvestable commodity, like crops or biofuels. Cape Wind Associate’s webpage reads “miles from the nearest shore, 130 wind turbines will gracefully harness the wind to produce … clean, renewable energy…By harnessing our local wind resources, we can contribute to reducing our dependence on imported energy” (2013). Words like “harness” and “harvest” are used by Cape Wind Associates to help establish wind as a resource akin to other power sources. By portraying wind as harvestable, Cape Wind Associates conceals the aspects of wind that make it a less desirable power source than, say, coal. “Harvest” and “harness” imply the sort of human control over wind that current technologies lack. Furthermore, using these terms makes wind seem to be available on demand, like a crop that simply needs to be gathered. Wind does not fit the model of human demand centered energy sources, however. Wind, in actuality, eludes capture and confinement, as I discussed in the previous section. Despite the wide availability of wind resources, Cape Wind Associates has argued passionately that Nantucket Sound is the right place to build the turbines. In order to site Cape Wind, developers delineated an area well suited to the project. Jim Gordon, the C.E.O. of Cape Wind Associates, is quoted in a Boston Globe article listing the factors that led to choosing the proposed site: Already drawn to Nantucket Sound, whose steady winds promised a sturdy flow of electricity, Gordon watched as a computer program drew tighter and tighter borders around a spot less than 6 miles off of Cape Cod [...] One diagram showed that the site […] could hold enough windmills to supply three-quarters of the Cape and Islands’ electricity needs during peak winds. Another showed that the site was clear of flight paths. Ferry routes neatly skimmed both edges. Shipping channels – not a problem. The water was shallow and sheltered enough to limit construction costs and protect wind 15 turbines from the ravages of crashing waves. ‘We said, ‘Oh, my God, this is incredible,’ said Gordon, president of Cape Wind Associates. ‘It all came together. It was so optimal.’ (Ebbert 2003) Jim Gordon’s quote argues that wind is a localized resource. Because wind cannot be barged, piped or trucked to a new location, developers have been quick to justify Cape Wind by saying “you have to build where the wind is” (Burnett 2009). The maps Cape Wind Associates published, which Jim Gordon alludes to in his quote, describe the area where turbines will be built as empty. The corporate spokesperson quoted above insists that even planes and boats avoid the area, further pointing to the blank nature of the area. When talking with people who favored the project, I often asked if there was any activity in the area that would be disrupted by the turbines. One supporter enthusiastically said “No, no. You can’t even sail in the area, it’s too shallow.” But the quote above emphasizes more than the emptiness of Nantucket sound, it also serves to justify the use of Nantucket Sound for the turbine site because the area possessed uniquely steady winds. 16 Figure 1. Map of Cape Wind site from Cape Wind Associates (Cape Wind Associates 2012) 17 The tools deployed by an energy company looking to site a turbine farm are almost always technical- measuring, mapping, delimiting, and identifying areas that are consistently gusty. This alludes to a process that Li calls rendering technical wherein subjects and social problems are made knowable and therefore manageable according to specific types of technical knowledge (Li 2007). This rendering technical of landscapes is used as an infallible justification for where turbines should be sited. The byline of the same newspaper article that quoted Gordon’s “a-ha!” moment with Horseshoe Shoal was “Despite opposition from Cape Cod homeowners, wind farm supporters say their site is worth the fight” (Ebbert 2003). If the Sound were treated as anything less than a technically magnificent site for the turbines, the project would be more and more difficult to justify against local opposition from elites. Li points out that a narrative of a problem connected to a solution is an integral part of rendering technical. Thus rendering technical is both about problematizing certain groups, ideas, and relations, but also about doing so in ways that fit existing knowledge or political motives. Cape Wind has defended Nantucket Sound as the location for the wind farm for twelve years of permitting and numerous court challenges, because it could generate clean electricity. Li writes that when a problem is linked to a technical solution, the solution is rendered non-political (2007:7). In this case, clean energy solution has become a moral imperative rather than a question of politics. The Cape Wind project has been proposed against a backdrop of global warming, which is often discussed in terms of technical problems (like increased carbon emissions) and technical solutions (like cap and trade programs, hybrid cars and CFC light bulbs). North American environmentalists have expressed discontent over the tendency to discuss 18 environmental problems in terms of technical solutions. In a sweeping critique of North American environmentalism, Ted Shellenberger and Michael Nordhaus argue that focusing on a technical understanding of climate change necessitates technical solutions to climate change which are achieved through lobbying campaigns, research reports, advertising, and public relations. They write that common recommendations to combat climate change have “the shared assumption that a) the problem should be framed as “environmental,” and b) our legislative proposals should be technical” (2005:21). In this case, clean energy is posed as the technical solution to the problem of dirty power. Li writes that rendering technical depoliticizes conflicts, and Nordhaus and Shellenberger add that technical problems and solutions have the effect of political expediency in the U.S. case. This political expediency played out for Cape Wind Associates at the permitting level. In terms of permitting, it is “optimal” to reduce Nantucket Sound to a set of specifications rather than acknowledge the various roles the body of water plays in Cape Cod residents’ lives. 19 3. Encroaching on the Beach If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air Quaint little villages here and there You’re sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod Cape Cod, that old Cape Cod -Patti Page, 1957 When I asked people how they thought the turbines would really look from the shore (there have been numerous simulations of the visual effects of the turbines from various locations), they often answered something to the effect of “it will look like a fence.” For those in favor of the project, using the visual of a fence seemed to point to how un-obtrusive the turbines would be, as in “it will only look like a fence on the horizon.” For those opposed, a fence on the horizon was incredibly off putting. One mock-up showed the view of Cape Wind from a beach nearby my temporary summer rental. The woman who showed me the picture pointed out that I should be particularly offended by the image. She asked, “Can you imagine driving over the Osterville bridge and seeing this?” 20 Figure 2. A simulation of the view from Osterville Bridge, MA (SaveOurSound.org 2013) 21 The bridge between the town where I resided, Centerville, and the town of Osterville was a short stretch of a main road along the ocean that crossed a small inlet of water. This area was largely residential, with few stores except a locally owned grocer. The bridge provided a quick reminder of the closeness of Nantucket Sound to the road- as you crossed the bridge there was a gap between neighborhood houses and you could see the water views residents enjoyed from their backyards. Should the project be built, the bridge would also provide a peek at what the waterfront homes will see of the turbines from their backyard windows. The fence on the horizon hints at the heated debates around the aesthetics of the turbines. 3.1 Obstructed Views Trade publications and planning literature often discusses community resistance to turbine projects as stemming from the visual impact of the turbines (Brittan 2001, Pasqualetti 2002, Bishop 2002). The aesthetics of turbines have become so commonly discussed, that a popular online comic strip dealing with topics of math, science, and language published a comic strip on wind turbines. In the comic, two stick figures sit looking out at a field of giant turbines spinning against the back drop of a clear sky. One stick figure observes that the turbines are a great alternative energy source but they are somewhat “unnerving.” He says they are reminiscent of the alien spaceships in War of the Worlds. In the next frame, the turbines sprout two legs and begin advancing on the stick figures surrounded by expletives like “crash, boom, bang!” As the figures flee the scene, they cry “Al Gore you’ve doomed us all!”(XKCD n.d.). 22 The comic points to how disconcerting the turbines are to some viewers. Turbines reach heights of 120 meters with blades spanning 100 meters, making them taller than the Statue of Liberty (American Wind Energy Association 2013). While some people view the turbines as beautiful, many more people I spoke to thought they were out of place in Cape Cod. Since the Cape Wind project was proposed, on shore turbines have sprung up in several local towns. These on shore generators are experiencing similar image woes to those of the Cape Wind turbines (Corcoran 2013). Some authors have pointed out that if the turbines looked more like windmills from centuries prior, they would face less resistance (Pasqualetti 2002). Artists have created concepts of some beautiful sculptural turbines with sails, yet little discussion has seriously been made to turn these ideas into reality. Instead, turbines are scaled up for efficiency (the larger the blades span the more electricity is generated per rotation) and often are branded with the name of the company that built them, for instance General Electric. In this way, turbines follow a visual logic of capitalism that is unsettling to many of the residents of Cape Cod. Turbines can be viewed as an extension of Cape Wind Associate’s attempts to control Nantucket Sound. Lefebvre argues that structures like turbines are a facet of abstract spaces. A monumental, vertical, steel-and-glass architectural formation “fulfills the extra function of ensuring that ‘something’ occupies this space, namely a signifier which, rather than signifying a void, signifies a plenitude of destructive force” (1991:287) Because abstract spaces cannot always be physically filled in, the best way to dominate them is through tall structures like turbines or skyscrapers that can be seen from great distances. Even if the space 23 cannot be literally filled, it can be occupied symbolically by such structures. Tall structures can be used to simultaneously symbolically and materially control space. The fact that the turbines are highly visible is the source of some of their power to affect energy consumption changes. As one economist told me “the turbines won’t do anything to reduce our power consumption. They’ll just be 130 fetishes in the Sound.” His conservative economic firm had conducted the first cost evaluation of the turbines and found the project to be “not worth the price” (Giuffre, Haughton, and Tuerck 2004). He implied two sides to these “fetishes.” The first was that the proponents of the turbines have attached huge symbolic value to the project as the first major offshore wind energy project in the country. The second was that should the turbines be built, they would only serve as symbolic interventions into dirty power. He believed that in the end, their impact went no further than their high visibility. However, the visibility of turbines has also served as an underlying current of resistance among certain residents in the Cape. 3.2 Visualizing Energy Production Turbines serve as visual reminders of aspects of modernity that have been taken for granted as invisible by the wealthy residents of Cape Cod. Many of the criticisms of the turbines aesthetically drew on the idea that they were markers of development in an area that many view as a haven from the city life of the Northeast (A. Parker 2013; Kennedy 2005; Adler 2007). Cape Cod is developed, of course. However, the area has cultivated a sense of being “apart” from the metropolitan belt of the New England. Cape Cod’s appeal as a resort area is the culmination of a century and a half of tourism in the area (Brown 1995; O’Connell 24 2003). This tourism capitalizes on “property in the horizon,” or scenery as a valuable commodity (Brown 1995:5). Tourism dates back to the mid-19 th century in Cape Cod, when famous transcendentalist Henry David wrote of his journeys to Cape Cod (Thoreau 2010). Though Thoreau’s account portrayed the Cape as desolate and savage, the boom of tourism to Cape Cod slowly caught on as transportation improved access to its most remote beaches. A few decades later, the relaxed summer environment offered by Cape Cod was highlighted by writers including Joseph C. Lincoln, who published fictionalized novels and short stories about Cape Cod in popular Northeast magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and the Delineator (Moore 2004; Lincoln 2006). Dana Brown writes that regional tourism the last quarter of the 19 th century was marked by a “sentimentalization” of the New England landscape (1995:5). Scenery in the 19 th century became an “intangible but very real product” which was bought and sold via the hotel rooms and train tickets which were necessary for the new bourgeoisie pastime of vacationing (1995:5). Yet this scenery could not appear affected by market transactions like buying, selling and speculating in order to fit the romantic, Transcendentalist, ideal of the era (1995:5). Thoreau wrote that “a man may stand there and put all America behind him” in his account of Cape Cod, illustrating the idyllic separation between the Cape Cod shore and the industrial Northeast life (2010:28). Brown highlights case studies like Nantucket and the tent city in Martha’s Vineyard in order to show how New England towns began to market their scenery. She argues that tourism was based in part on contradictory negotiations between the reality of the past and the experiences that tourists wanted to have away from the city. Both 25 scenery and the built environment in Cape Cod had to be manufactured so that needs for nostalgia and comfort could be met simultaneously. This meant, for instance, that historic architecture on Nantucket Island had to offer indoor plumbing. Brown also emphasizes that tourism in the 19 th century was based on cultivating an upper-class identity. Travelling to enjoy “property in the horizon” became a characteristic of genteel, yet hard working citizens. Thus, people who travel to Cape Cod, even today, are not necessarily claiming literal ownership over Nantucket Sound and the horizon, rather this “property” is claimed as part of a set of social and class relationships. Chris Hann, in his work on the anthropology of property, points out that people identify differently with different types of properties. A sacred shrine is not analogous to a piece of suburban real estate, and thus the relationships of ownership and control allotted by a suburban plot are quite different than those allotted by a sacred site (1998:3). Tourism has cultivated a sense of ownership over the horizon that does not play out in a legal frame, since residents of beach front houses have no legal rights to the Sound. Catherine Verdery, also writing on property, points out that property does not only exist in the sense of narrow rights claims, but also is reliant on people’s ability to organize to achieve their goals (1998). As this section demonstrates, there exists a set of property relations between members of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and the waters where the turbines would be built, but the mobilization of their claims of ownership proved problematic. Building on Brown’s historical work, O’Conell points out the contradictions of Cape Cod life in the present day. Overdevelopment is now said to be threatening the area’s “authenticity,” yet his work also makes clear that the Cape’s authenticity was in part the 26 calculated choice of resort promoters (2005). The paradox that Brown and O’Conell point out was salient in my interactions with Cape residents. Many of my casual conversations during the high tourist season revolved around how residents of the Cape have considered it as a refuge from the dense metropolitan belt that makes up the Northeast. For example, one woman, whose father was ill when she was younger, told me that even when he was at his worst, her mother always told the family “it will all be better when we go to Martha’s Vineyard.” One gracious elderly woman spoke to me of the changes in Nantucket throughout her tenure on the island. She spoke wistfully of a bygone era of small beach houses and restricted automobile traffic. “No one built these trophy properties you see nowadays. No one drove anywhere. We biked everywhere, it was the most beautiful place on earth. Well it still is, but it’s different.” She had been to Nantucket every summer since 1954, with the exception of one year, when her daughter was born. Her story, like others, required an active reimagining of the Cape as a relaxing, exclusive space. In actuality, as residents jokingly gripe, the Cape is a mess of traffic jams and strip malls not very different from the surrounding cities. “It’s just another suburb of Boston” my neighbors told me. When I would comment on the Cape’s enjoyable charms, people in line at the deli would say “Wait until the tourists come in July, it’ll be a mess.” Though Nantucket is more remote than the Cape peninsula, it has also been affected by increased automobile traffic and other modern afflictions. The woman quoted above complained particularly of the “mega mansions” of wealthy residents like Jack Welch, former C.E.O. of General Electric. 27 Development in Cape Cod is, in some ways, masked by strict building codes and tall hedges for many of the wealthy who vacation on the Cape. The idea that turbines are evocative because they are signs of development is more or less an argument that they are visible signs that the Cape is not separate from other parts of Massachusetts. People in the Cape use electricity just like everyone else, but up until the proposed turbines they could chose to forget how that electricity came to be. One man who worked in a hotel, and who later became active in fighting in favor of the turbines, told me that the upper-class seasonal residents of Cape Cod think that electricity comes out of a hole in the wall. This, he argued, was purposeful blindness to the ways electricity is actually produced. Electricity production is not an aesthetically pleasing process, whether that is from coal fired plants or turbines, but some Cape residents can afford to live at a great distance from the sensory reminders of the process that powers their lights. The electricity grid allows power from coal and natural gas plants as far away as Ontario and as nearby as the poorer suburbs of Boston to be transported to the Cape. One of the most salient critiques I heard of Cape Cod residents who were against the turbine development was that if they were successful in defeating Cape Wind, a coal power plant would have to be built in Chelsea, a working class area 70 miles from Cape Cod, to provide the electricity needed by Cape dwellers. This was an obvious exaggeration; the coal plant was to be built regardless of Cape Wind’s fate, but it again pointed to the ways wind power was tied up in carbon based energy production. 28 3.3 An Ardent Defense of the Sound While Cape Wind Associates grappled with controlling the wind, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound has faced difficulty asserting the reasons why they oppose the project. Partially, the Alliance’s problem came from the sentimental nature of people’s connections to Cape Cod. The organization, which was mainly composed of seasonal residents of Cape Cod (including a handful of well-known and wealthy individuals), initially based its campaign on a particular aesthetic and history of Cape Cod. One of their fliers attempted to articulate the ways the scenery of Cape Cod were meaningful for these residents: The ocean and bays that surround us are perhaps our town’s most important and defining natural resource and it is these unspoiled waters that are the very essence of Cape Cod. We are a community of people drawn to the sea as sightseers, swimmers, sailors, fishermen or beachcombers. We are thankful for, and jealously seek to protect, the open space of the ocean around us. There is no other part of our community that offers more sweeping vistas, wildlife diversity and a place of refuge from the steady march of development. -Barnstable Land Trust Though the town of Barnstable is not pictured in brochure, the reader gets a good idea of how it looks from this description. As a vacation spot, the Cape is perhaps defined by two things in the minds of more distant publics- quaintness and wealth. The name ‘Barnstable’ is more reminiscent of the former characteristic. The Alliance’s stance on the Cape Wind project is carefully balanced here, citizens of a local town are consulted for an opinion, and the concern over aesthetic ‘views’ plays no more prominently than concern for ecology and livelihoods. No mansions are pictured, no over-crowded beaches during tourist season, and aside from a small list of stakeholders on the back, there is no mention of the Kennedys or any other prominent Cape residents. 29 While residents of the towns facing the turbines can sympathize with the idea of a strange view from the nearby beaches, this argument loses traction amongst those who do not frequently visit Cape Cod. For this reason, the Alliance sympathizers I spoke with often pointed out how Jim Gordon was not from Cape Cod. “He’s not local. If he was, he would know how closely you can sail to the turbines. He just bought his mother a house in Dennis so he could say he was local” an opponent to the turbines told me. Her view fits the larger parable of Cape Wind Associates as prospectors, arriving in Cape Cod to exploit the local residents. But her view also offers a counter to Cape Wind Associate’s supposed expertise. Another resident, who was not involved in protesting the turbines, told me that her main issue with the project had been that Cape Wind Associates failed to consult local government about the project. For seasonal and year round residents of the Cape, being able to claim to be a local is deeply meaningful. The family I lived with in the mid-Cape region quipped that people mid- Cape believed they were “true Cape Codders” because they never crossed the Sagamore bridge (between mainland Massachusetts and the Cape Cod peninsula), but people living in the outer Cape believed they were the real Cape Codders because they never went beyond the “elbow” of the Cape Cod, where the peninsula hooks northward near the town of Chatham. This part of Cape Cod faces the Atlantic Ocean rather than the calmer Nantucket Sound waters, and is about an hour’s drive past the first towns on the Cape. Some of the people I talked to who opposed the project invoked localness as the problem for why more Cape residents had not mobilized to fight the turbines. Towns facing other bodies of water, rather 30 than Nantucket Sound, were indicted for not understanding the importance of stopping the project. Residents opposed to Cape Wind in towns like Hyannis, which are close to the project, have already claimed the Sound as theirs. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in particular has been decried by the media and the turbine developers as having a case of “NIMBYism” (Keller 2010). Since its introduction in a 1980 magazine article on hazardous waste, NIMBY, which stands for “Not In My Back Yard,” has often been used as a disapproving term for those who oppose development projects in their communities. The use of the term NIMBY as pejorative is somewhat problematic since the effects of development projects are often felt mostly by nearby communities (Wolsink 2007). In this case, though, NIMBYism highlights the way the resistance has treated Nantucket Sound as their back yard rather Cape Wind Associates’. There are many reasons people would support the concept of wind energy, but not support a local turbine project ‘in their backyards.’ Local ideas about the impact of a turbine project often become salient in the planning and permitting phase of a project. In the planning phase, the contradictions between the de-territorialized abstract space of the developers comes into direct conflict with the lived space of denizens of an area. Once discussion moves from nebulous questions of the benefits of green energy or wind power to the actual particulars of an area, local populations react. Many environmental scientists have made the somewhat banal observation that characteristics of the selected site are crucial for the attitudes that people develop towards a project (Wolsink 2007). The types of landscapes that are ideal for turbines tend to be areas that are scenic and often affective. Additionally, 31 the large area required for turbine sites (on land or offshore) means that the areas where turbines are to be built are typically free of other large structures and buildings. Thus, turbines are particularly disruptive to the status quo in the areas most suitable for wind farms. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound mobilized around many aspects of the Cape Wind project. They used the views, but they also invoked a number of other reasons why the turbines should not be built. Their aim was to counter the supposed expertise of Cape Wind Associates through various specific and technical problems with the project. These reasons, listed on the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound’s website, include: 1. The turbines will occupy “over 40 percent of the natural horizon,” thus “marring” the view. 2. The turbines are dangerously located for commercial and private flights over the area. 3. There are better alternative sites. 4. The turbines may violate the endangered species act. 5. The turbines may violate the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), namely construction or operation may result in the killing, harming, or harassment of seals, dolphins, or whales. 6. The turbines may harm migratory birds. 7. The turbines may result in decreased fishing yields and/or restriction on commercial and recreational fishing. 8. The turbines are dangerously close to passenger ferry and shipping routes. 9. The turbines will desecrate tribal lands (SaveOurSound.org 2013). People I spoke with who were for the turbines, or ambivalent towards them, found this succession of attacks to be somewhat insincere. This stems in part from the fact that the Alliance was funded largely through one specific Cape Cod resident, William Koch, who has his own well-known ties to coal and conservative politics. But as one neighbor pointed out, the succession of attacks read like a “laundry list” and with each failed attack a new reason to resist the turbines was introduced by the Alliance. 32 This strategy of introducing singular reasons to save the Sound reflects a rendering technical of the waters of Nantucket Sound similar to how Cape Wind Associates had proceeded. Each of these reasons to not build the turbines singled out one part of Nantucket Sound, either a reason it was valuable or a reason it was a poor site for the turbines. Take, for instance, issues dealing with transportation through and above the Sound. The map the Alliance provided to illustrate this point is a stark contrast to the map Cape Wind Associates used to explain the site of the turbines. Figure 3. Flights over Nantucket Sound, according to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound (SaveOurSound.org 2013) 33 In the Cape Wind Associates map, the airways and ferry lines neatly diverge around the site where the turbines will be built. The Alliance version paints a messier picture of traffic above and through the Cape. However, their map also highlights a certain relationship with the Sound- that the waters are heavily trafficked. This ignores other aspects of the area that the Alliance itself points out as important in their list, namely the more preservationist points dealing with migratory birds, marine mammals and endangered species. The incongruity between campaigns of preserving the ecosystem of the Sound while later drawing up maps of how many boats and planes traffic the Sound each day reveals flaws in the Alliance’s approach. Namely, they identified problems with the project proposal and then identified other conflicting aspects of the Cape. Here, the Cape is both heavily trafficked by humans in boats and planes but also a site to be protected for the sake of the birds, whales, and cod. This is one way the Alliance problematized the location of the turbines, but on other maps they went even further in terms of rendering Nantucket Sound abstract. One map shows “alternate sites” for the project. In the map, the Alliance delineates federal waters, something Cape Wind Associates found desirable about the current proposed sites, and then draws in additional sites for turbines within the federal waters and outside of them. This map actively commoditizes other nearby water bodies, sacrificing them for the purpose of saving Nantucket Sound. This “alternate site” map also turns the battle over Nantucket Sound into a fight that Cape Wind Associates could easily win by proving that the already proposed site was more desirable than the surrounding waters using equally arbitrary measures of value. 34 Finally, the Alliance took even the most emotional argument against the turbines, the view which disrupts resident’s sense of place, and turned it into a numbers game. Their website proclaims “forty percent” of the horizon would be impacted by turbines. That leaves sixty percent of the views intact. In the end, the means by which the Alliance attempted to subvert the project often appeared similar to the ways developers were treating Nantucket Sound, as a space with certain characteristics of value that could be claimed by local residents. Classifying people’s relationship to Nantucket Sound through lists, percentages and maps reflects the process of rendering technical Li discusses. The Alliance put forth an effort to make their attachments to Nantucket Sound comprehensible and thus argue that they should have control of the area threatened by the project. Figure 4. Map of alternative sites for turbines provided by the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound (SaveOurSound.org 2013) 35 Protests against Cape Wind have effectively criticized the way that Cape Wind Associates has chosen to develop Nantucket Sound by pointing out the ways in which wind development resembles capitalist exploitation. Cape Wind Associates has taken control over an area by making it seem empty and technically “optimal” for a turbine farm. By singling out characteristics of Nantucket Sound that make it valuable, Cape Wind Associates has made Nantucket sound an abstract space. Unfortunately, the opposition to Cape Wind has also chosen to single out certain characteristics of Nantucket Sound to shut down the project. This manner of protest mimics the logics of abstract spaces. The Alliance turned to these technical dimensions of the project after coming under much criticism for their upper- class sentiments. Both sides sought to de-politicize the conflict through the process of rendering technical, but the Alliance wanted to counter the allegations that their objections to Cape Wind only reflected their privileged membership’s attachment to Cape Cod as a vacation area by basing their arguments against the project in technical terms. The focus on the technical was meant not only to undermine Cape Wind Associate’s expertise, but also to make the Alliance’s claims more solid than simply complaints about the view. 36 Conclusions Kennedy’s editorial plea for turbines to be placed “appropriately” can be read two ways in the context of this work. First, Cape Wind Associates worked to make Nantucket Sound an appropriate place for turbines. This body of water has always been treasured for its winds, but these winds have been the core of Nantucket Sound’s recreational use rather than a source of energy. Developers have tried to establish Nantucket sound as a specific type of space- a commercially valuable swath of water- through a combination of invoking expertise and rendering the area technical. Building on Mitchell’s discussion of carbon-based energy, Cape Wind has shown the ways wind energy development resembles forms of resource extraction commonly associated with oil, coal and natural gas. Those opposed to the turbine project in Cape Cod often made sense of the turbine politics through the politics of traditional power production by evoking metaphors of prospecting, allusions to land grabs and parallels between Cape Cod and Saudi Arabia. Renewables provide an alternative to dirty and finite fossil fuels, and a way to shrink carbon footprints, all while keeping our houses comfortable and lit. However, the professed benefits of wind turbines (as with other renewables like solar power), obscure an extensive legacy of carbon energy production and its impact on how renewables are developed. In the shadow of carbon fuels, Cape Wind Associates has actively constructed wind as a commodity that is limited and controllable, despite wind’s abundant and unpredictable nature. 37 Mitchell argues that analyses of the nature of energy commodities reveals opportunities for agency and control that extend beyond the commodity’s ability to generate electricity. In his words, it is possible to “translate one form of power into another”- the power source translates into certain forms of political power (2011:16). But the material nature of a power supply also reveals its vulnerabilities (Mitchell 2011). The residents who expressed discomfort at the politics of the Cape Wind project rallied behind the idea that Nantucket Sound was not an “appropriate” place for turbines. I argue that this stems from one of wind power’s vulnerabilities as a power source, the visible technology used to convert wind into electricity. While the turbines will appear small from the distant shores of Cape Cod, residents perceive the turbines as a reminder of their own energy consumption and as an encroachment of their space, as well as their upper-class sensibilities. In this case, the difficulties of siting in Cape Cod centered on Cape Cod’s long history as a scenic destination and the local, wealthy residents who had the resources to oppose the project because it interrupted their imagination of Cape Cod. In my work with the upper-class residents who were opposed to the project, I found that they inadvertently participated in the rendering technical of Nantucket Sound. While their protests often keenly pointed out the problematic ways that Cape Wind Associates had taken control over Nantucket Sound, the successive strategies the resistance adopted to protest Cape Wind followed many of the same logics of rendering the area technical that Cape Wind Associates employed in order to be permitted to build the turbines. In other words, developers and protestors were each treating Nantucket Sound in similar ways. The “anti-politics” created by this rendering technical is distinct from Li’s study. For Li, who 38 builds heavily on James Ferguson’s previous work, depoliticizing development projects allows developers to go on to reproduce the status quo, including existing class hierarchies (Li 2007; Ferguson 1990). In this case, both sides have participated in the rendering technical and, in the end, this worked to the disadvantage of the Alliance. Li argues the “unintended effects” of development projects continually work in favor of the elite actors instituting development (2007). While both Cape Wind Associates and the Alliance constitute elite actors, rendering technical was a strategy that best served the developers. The developer’s relative success in the Cape Wind case was based in their framing of what was at stake. The idea of a “clean energy future” proved to be a salient rallying cry in support of the project amongst Massachusetts residents. For the Alliance, what was at stake never moved beyond a preservation of a particular status quo based on elite sensibilities and an imagined Cape Cod. However, the Cape Wind saga is ongoing. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound clearly states on the landing page of the organization’s website “2013: The Beginning of the end for Cape Wind” (SaveOurSound.org 2013). However, Cape Wind Associates inches closer and closer to building the project. 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Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Anthropology
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
Graduate
Abstract horizons and concrete winds : the politics of development in the Cape Wind project
Text