Attack by the coal kings?

Mining coal from a mountaintop in Appalachia

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

At the last moment, just before a federal tax-credit deadline, the Trump regime has announced it will delay a final decision on approving the big Vineyard Wind offshore wind-turbine project for  yet more “review’’ of the already studied nearly unto death project.  The  move means that the project will probably lose the tax credit in effect right now and require congressional and presidential approval to get it renewed  – legislation that the  coal industry’s most powerful servant, Senate Majority Leader  Mitch McConnell, of coal-state Kentucky, might kill.

Does the sudden delay announcement  come mostly because the Trumpists want to undermine competition with the fossil-fuel industry, which it’s in bed with, or to stick it to a Democratic part of the nation that would benefit from a big increase in locally created, and clean, energy, or  because of  complaints from some fishermen? (Wind-turbine towers actually tend to increase the number of fish in the areas where they go up by acting as reefs.)

The delay, or sabotage, might kill the project, by among other things, killing its financing. And it certainly means that the 80-megawatt project for south of Martha’s Vineyard can no longer start generating electricity for 200,000 electric customers (and many more people in those customers’ homes and businesses) by the end of 2021, as had been the plan.

The delay, typical of the interminable red tape and politicization that block other needed infrastructure work in America, will  discourage similar windpower projects. Meanwhile, an irony is that the fishermen who oppose Vineyard Wind and similar projects meant to help wean us off fossil fuel are enabling, in their small way, such global-warming effects as hotter seas  and ocean acidification that kill off some important fish species. In any event, America continues to be about the worst developed country in which to try to get big projects built. That’s one reason a lot of it’s starting to look like a Third World nation.  And whatever happened to Trump’s big plans for infrastructure?

Meanwhile, for an alarming look, with graphics, at how global warming is changing America, please hit this link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/

It shows that Rhode Island is a particularly hot spot.