Daniel Kanter

Finally Friends: Massachusetts and Rhode Island

Amid news of Tony Hayward’s replacement as CEO of BP and the ever-constant drone of the latest Gulf spill news continuing to occupy the airwaves as we approach August, perhaps we’re starting to find a silver lining behind the dark cloud of the BP disaster and the nation’s energy crisis at large.

In contrast to an April, 2010 New York Times article casting Rhode Island and Massachusetts as two players enmeshed in bitter competition over wind energy, today’s news carries a decidedly different tone. The two states have parsed no words in the past about their desires to boast the nation’s first offshore wind farms-- Massachusetts banking on the ever-controversial Cape Wind project off the Nantucket Sound and Rhode Island planning on one project off Block Island and another in the Rhode Island Sound. The competition, at best, might have seemed like playful banter between neighbors. But with environmentalists concerned about time-sensitivity trumping environmental concerns, not to mention the real monetary stakes for both states, it seems that the battle to be “first!” may have been counterproductive. One Rhode Island researcher even noted that he couldn’t discuss his findings with his former students who worked for Massachusetts.

The largest environmental disaster in the nation’s history and a few budget-battle-filled months later, it seems a shift has taken place. The Boston Globe reports:

Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Governor Donald Carcieri of Rhode Island signed a memorandum of understanding yesterday committing both states to collaborating on offshore wind efforts in 400 square miles from 12 miles southwest of Martha’s Vineyard and extending 20 miles west into Rhode Island Sound.

Not only are the states banding together by utilizing mutual brain-power and shared areas of ocean, Patrick also made the economic argument that alternative energy has the potential to create hundreds of new jobs, too often rebutted by the flawed argument that green energy would be economically damaging for its potential to hurt the coal and oil industries.

So while it might be years before the reliance on oil and coal disappear, it seems that the BP oil disaster, combined with state governments feeling the budget pinch and so many individuals out of work, may have inspired a reinvigorated enthusiasm for alternative energy. At least the newfound partnership between Massachusetts and Rhode Island certainly seems like a step in the right direction.

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Posted at 3:48 PM, Jul 27, 2010 in Energy & Environment
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