For The Past Year I’ve Been Filming A Documentary About … Offshore Wind

You know that film project that hade me I zipping all around the northeast a little while back? The one that I kept going to DC for to interview those congressmen and think tank researchers? … The one that I lamented as being sunk when my car got rammed?

I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned what it was all about.

I should probably fix that now …

The film is a feature about offshore wind and the plan to essentially ring the entire east coast of the United States with a contiguous picket fence of colossal wind turbines. It’s a film about who these projects impact, the ecosystems that will be changed, the livelihoods that are to be lost, the people pushing the projects, and the people fighting against them.

At this point I believe it’s clear that I have a thing for the stories behind infrastructural mega-projects — new cities, land reclaimed from the sea, and continent-traversing trade corridors — and there may not be a bigger such undertaking in the United States right now than this. In the 21st century USA, we simple do not do things like this anymore. This is some real China shit.

When we look at the collective sum of the lease areas that are now reserved for offshore wind, this is going to fundamentally change the paradigms of life on the East Coast, how food is procured, who has rights to the sea, and who has the rights — and the moral justification — to damage the environment. This is the first step of the industrialization of the ocean. Remember those stories that I was writing about floating cities a while back? Yes, I believe the plan is bigger — much bigger — than wind turbines alone.

We build things and places change. There is no going back. And the story of this change is the story of human civilization … But we’ve always halted our developmental forays when arriving at the sea. Until now.

I need to state here that I don’t think wind energy in itself is an issue — or is even an interesting enough topic to make a film about. If some farmer wants to make a little extra money leasing out parts of his land for windmills, then good for him. If energy companies want to buy large swaths of forest and clear cut them to erect thickets of bird killing rotating blades to save the environment, then they should be regulated like any other company that wishes to do the same. I think windmills are ugly, yes; I don’t think they work very well; I think they’re more expensive than they’re worth, but I’m not going to complain about what someone else is doing on their land just because I don’t like it. But to go out into the ocean — an area that’s more or less free use for multiple industries — and damage the fishing grounds, kill whales, and muck up the view from otherwise beautiful beaches for a “climate crises” that will more than likely never really materialize is another story altogether.

And then when you dig a little deeper you find that the companies building these offshore wind farms are European oil and gas companies (i.e. the exact same bad guys of the climate crisis) who are coming over to the US and soaking up billions of dollars in government subsidies for a form of energy that shows little indication of ever being financially sustainable, does nothing to curb “global warming,” raises costs for rate payers, destroys the livelihoods of local fishermen, takes a massive amount of carbon to build, install, and maintain, is potentially a national security issue, needs to be backed up by fossil fuel energy plants, and doesn’t even last very long …

… and then you have the makings of a film.

But pursuing this story has firmly dropped me on one side of a political line, and this may end up being the most interesting thing about this project …

Politics are inherently dumb. And that’s ok. But what’s even more dumb is when complex, non-inherently political issues become politically polarized to the extent that people believe one way or the other based on what their politicians and supporting media say.

We don’t vote the way we think, we think the way we vote.

That said, the topic of off-shore wind has become politicized. Trump is known for being vehemently opposed to it, so I guess this means a critical mass of liberals are going to support it — even at the expense of contradicting all those “save the whales” t-shirts they’ve been wearing for generations.

Shouldn’t the energy modalities that we transition to be based on scientific and economic evidence? We can measure the cost / benefit of offshore wind. We can find out how much additional energy it provides, how much carbon it off-sets, how much more it will cost, and whether or not it will have a positive impact. We can calculate the lost revenue that fishing and tourism economies will face, we can figure out how it will adversely impact coastal living, we can put a valuation on the degree to which they further endanger maritime life … and come up with opinions on whether they should be pursued or not.

But all too often these cost / benefit analysis aren’t even being done. These off-shore wind farms are being fast-tracked via proclamations and decrees ala the emergency authorizations of Covid. Essential steps are being skipped, studies aren’t being conducted, and existing regulations are being sidestepped.

They are building first and asking questions later.

In other words, I’m standing on the precipice of a bonafide clusterfuck, the ideal position for a documentary filmmaker to be in.