In today's Wall Street Journal, Robert Kennedy, Jr. writes another Op-Ed in opposition to Cape Wind. My online response to Kennedy's unfortunate perspective is copied below. Here is the short link to the WSJ piece, entitled, "Nantucket's Wind Power Rip-Off:"  http://tinyurl.com/3lnk7r4
 

Robert Kennedy misses the point altogether! Taxpayers in MA and all over the country are routinely “fleeced” each time they pay their utility bill and appropriate warning labels are omitted. Here is what consumers are paying for on top of their monthly bills: WARNING:

“NATURAL GAS FRACKING emits excessive greenhouse gas emissions to our already rapidly warming atmosphere;”

“COAL EXTRACTION contaminates drinking water supply wells and renders rural communities toxic;”

“DRILLING for and REFINING OIL poses grave risks to human health, ecological diversity and planetary sustainability.”

It's preposterous for Robert Kennedy to engage in any economic discussion about energy without first defining the full costs of fossil fuels. If the complete (unreported and unadvertised) costs of natural gas, coal and oil were, in fact, passed along to the consumer in the form of a bill, not only would most Americans (with the noble exception of Robert Kennedy and the Koch brothers) be unable to pay it, but there would be no wiggle room left for cagey pundits to frame clean energy alternatives as “too costly.” Seriously! If I were Seth Meyers, my only comment would be. “REALLY!?!”

It's time to get real on energy, its costs and the true price we pay every day when we allow moneyed executives and their agents to misrepresent the truth. But you'd never know that watching an evening Shell, Exxon, ANGA or COAL ad. If they were telling the truth about their corporate missions, they'd be cooking our cube steaks and delivering cleaner air to our communities. But they're not. And they never will!

Stacy Clark writes in Dallas and Boston and is a Co-Founder of INKUBATE, a new online home for writers and the publishers, editors and agents they want to reach. She is a contributing writer to EnergyBoom and a member of the National Society of Science Writers and the Society of Environmental Journalists. She can be reached at stacy@inkubate.com and stacy@dallaswriter.com.

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