People who write letters to the New York Times

A couple Sundays back the New York Times Magazine ran an article about how the mostly-liberal denizens of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket were fighting a plan to erect large turbine windmills in Nantucket Sound to generate renewable energy. Today's magazine has a basketful of letters on the article. By a strange coincidence, those letters opposing the offshore wind farm are all from…Massachusetts! One, by a Charles Manker of Chatham, denounces the "aesthetic pollution" that the seabased windmills would pose. Let me ask something: is there a single energy-producing infrastructure that does not cause "aesthetic pollution"? For that matter, is there a modern structure – hospital, football stadium, Starbucks – that doesn't despoil nature in some way? Is this a valid reason to avoid our God-given right to coffee, football and X-rays? No, I say!

But another letter grabbed my attention, strictly for etymological reasons:

I don't have a house overlooking Nantucket Sound or a yacht to sail its waters. But whenever I walk along the shores of the sound, I become more convinced that this priceless natural resource is simply not the place for the controversial wind-turbine development proposed by Cape Wind Associates. [Emphasis added]

The remainder of this letter by one Paul Kemprecos of Dennis Port, Massachusetts, who must have composed it on a manual typewriter, is hereby snipped.

Here's my question: at what point did this project become "controversial"? In fact, it's remarkably straightforward: clean, renewable energy is available. The tradeoff, like any power plant, is an economic effect (e.g. reduced property values) and an environmental effect (e.g. power plant emissions) in exchange for electricity. This is basic. We like electricity: we like our washing machines, refrigerators, and DVD players. But if we want power, we need power plants. What is the controversy?

The answer is there is none. Instead, the word "controversial" has been transformed into a one-size-fits-all argument against anything that is patently obvious but that if an interested party raises objection, the issue is ipso facto "controversial." This technique has been used by Senate Democrats to hold up the nominations of Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen (and probably Bill Pryor when his vote comes up). All received high marks of "qualified" or "well-qualified" by the American Bar Association and all have demonstrated sharp legal minds. But Estrada "hasn't answered questions" and Owen handed down a ruling and Pryor made some remarks – controversy! The validity of the objections is distant and irrelevant; these candidates are "controversial" and shall be denied the vote afforded to every other judicial nominee in American history.

"Controversy" is defined in my dictionary as "disagreement on a contentious topic" but the disagreement needs to have a valid basis. If I tell my son he has to eat his broccoli and he disagrees, there is no controversy here. Supreme Court decisions are, by nature of their legal complexity, controversial. The 2000 election, closest in a century, fits the definition of "controversial" no matter which side you supported. But the topic of an offshore wind farm is not "controversial" in any meaningful way. Instead, it's about as black-and-white as you can get and here's the bottom line: the rich liberal yacht-scrubbers like Walter Cronkite want electricity. They just want it made somewhere else, so there is no meaningful sacrifice on their part. Not only is that uncontroversial, it's downright predictable.