I was walking along the beach last week, just down the street from my home on the Connecticut shore. The weather was early-September pristine, with a hint of a fall chill and a brisk wind churning up waves on Long Island Sound. Wind, waves and sun combining for a blissful presence. I took a brief video so you could enjoy it too. Turn your volume up, click below and take a deep breath.
About 32 nautical miles from this Connecticut shore, near the Rhode Island border, a major renewable energy project called “Revolution Wind” stands 80 percent complete, and ready to fulfill the clean energy needs of 350,000 homes in the two states, presumably including my own.
But Dr. Evil had other ideas. It seems that Orsted, the company behind Revolution Wind, comes from Denmark, the country that happens to stand in the way of Trump’s desired (and insane) takeover of Greenland. Plus, New England is the bluest region of the country - six solidly Democratic states.
Connecticut and Rhode Island are both suing the Trump regime over their decision to pause construction.
Click on my video again. Wind, water and sun. It can’t possibly get cleaner than that. If you focus toward the end of the video, you’ll see a bird splashing on the shore. Looks like a young child dipping their toe into the water, shaking their head with delight.
Compare that to this photo taken after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, when 200 million gallons of oil found their way into the Gulf of Mexico (Do I get a presidential slap-down for calling it that?).
Did you know that over 800,000 birds were killed during the BP oil spill in 2010?
And Trump is complaining about wind turbines killing a couple of birds near his golf course. He calls them “windmills,” though they’re not. Perhaps he imagines himself to be a modern-day Don Quixote, though he is only half right about that: none of the nobility but all of the insanity. He thinks he’s being humane to birds. I’ve got a few birds in my neighborhood, perfectly happy with the plans for Revolution Wind, who would prefer offshore turbines to taking a bath in pure crude.
As irrational as Trump has become, his hatred of clean energy, especially wind, really takes the cake. And so, because the Scottish government refused to put an end to a wind turbine project near one of his golf courses, he’s taking it out on the people of my state and pulling the plug on this nearly complete project.
But Rhode Island and Connecticut are not just accepting the senseless order lying down. CT Attorney General William Tong said the regime’s “erratic and reckless governing is blatantly illegal, and we’re suing to stop it.”
The fragile balance of the local ecosystem is perfectly embodied by my neighbor, the egret in the video below. Watch how it walks, slowly, deliberately, each step carefully assessed and meticulously taken, with long, reed-thin legs making faint but discernable tracks in the sand. It is a study in intentionality, touched by an innate fear of the catastrophic consequences of taking just one misstep. I could watch that egret on a loop - or live - for hours. It has become my stand-in for Mary Oliver’s grasshopper.
So tell me President Trump, is that bird “woke?” Did it vote for Harris? What do you have against it, that you want to fill its lungs with toxic fumes and its habitat with oil spills?
This coming week, Jews read the Torah portion of Ki Tavo, which includes a lengthy list of blessings and curses, rife with warnings as to how God - and the earth itself - will reject us if we abuse our environment.
Deuteronomy 28: 22-24
These verses are a reminder and warning that we are well on the path toward making the earth uninhabitable. The Talmud (Ta’anit 3b:9) understood what’s at stake in our partnering with natural forces, stating, “Clouds and winds are so significant that, in terms of their benefit, they are secondary only to rain.”
Long before Trump’s latest abominations, greed and denial led us to this dangerous place, (fossil) fueling the degradation of our home. Now we need to let nature itself point us in the right direction.
In the scheme of things, a pristine shoreline seems like a less urgent priority in the face of so many abuses of this burgeoning dictatorship, as delineated in a powerful essay by Ezra Klein in today’s NYT, Stop Acting Like this is Normal.
But the capricious shutdown of Revolution Wind project impacts much more than climate, addressing energy needs, economic considerations, employment and home energy costs, along with executive overreach and the rule of law.
“The Project has spent billions of dollars in reliance on…valid approvals,” the Revolution Wind filing said, per Politico. “The Stop Work Order is invalid and must be set aside because it was issued without statutory authority, in violation of agency regulations and procedures and the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and is arbitrary and capricious.”
While we fight the regime on any number of fronts, this one is no less important than any of the others. This suit bears watching.
I’ll be looking on with great interest - from the front row.
