Green hypocrisy: ‘The problem is it’s going to be visible’

For years, the hypocrisy of environmentalists has been on display with the Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, near Cape Cod, Mass.

The project has finally begun construction but only after a 13-year campaign by rich liberals to block the alternative energy plant because wind turbines would mess with their wonderful view. In between their fund-raising for Elizabeth Warren and their angry letters to the editor denouncing the Koch brothers, these rich liberals are still trying to tie up the wind plant in court.

Here’s a bit of a 2003 article on the fight:

“State Sen. Rob O’Leary represents the Cape Cod region. … O’Leary says he support wind power in principle, just not at that location.

“‘The problem is that they’re going to be visible. And they’re going to be visible at night and they’re going to be visible during the day and they’re going to be lit up,’ says O’Leary.”

Only invisible power plants are acceptable in coastal Massachusetts, you see.

Save the planet? Forget that. Save the view!

Now we have the California version. State Democrats have been telling us for a generation of the urgent need to save the planet by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. But Los Angeles politician Felipe Fuentes — like Rob O’Leary a Sierra Club-loving Dem — has decided that the problem with solar panels is that they’re, yunno, visible.

“Worried solar farms could overtake prized patches of open space, a Los Angeles councilman is asking the Department of Water and Power board to put off allowing new arrays that are mounted on the ground — part of its Feed-In Tariff program — until the city can make sure they mesh with neighborhoods.”

That’s from the L.A. Times. But there’s a problem for Fuentes. The sort of laws he helped get adopted while in the state Legislature don’t allow the city to interfere with people saving the planet:

“City officials say under California’s Solar Rights Act, local jurisdictions are supposed to allow private solar installations unless they harm public health or safety.”

Invasive mandates fine — for other neighborhoods

Now of course Cape Codders and Angelenos have every right to be NIMBYs. But Massachusetts and L.A. are very much hubs of the green religionists who depict those with objections large and small to their agenda as people who don’t care about Mother Earth.

Their green fervor turns out to be fleeting when they’re asked to suffer.

Who knew? Visual blight is an even bigger problem than saving the planet from evil fossil fuels.