These whales are on the brink. Now comes climate change — and wind power.

[Gunnar Larson]

With only about 300 left
<https://www.andersoncabotcenterforoceanlife.org/blog/right-whale-population-declines-for-10th-straight-year/>,
the North Atlantic right whale ranks as one of the world’s most endangered
marine mammals
<https://www.worldwildlife.org/species-categories/marine-animals/species/directory>.
Nearly annihilated centuries ago by whalers, the slow-swimming species is
said to have earned its name because it was the “right” whale to hunt.

Old-fashioned harpoons have yielded to other threats. Humans are still
killing right whales at startlingly high numbers
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/two-percent-of-the-worlds-north-atlantic-right-whales-have-died-in-the-last-two-months/2019/07/31/d3de7d1e-ae31-11e9-9411-a608f9d0c2d3_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_6>
—
but by accident. Waters free from whalers now brim with ships that strike
them, and ropes that entangle them.

But Amy DiSibio, a retired stock trader who has vacationed in Nantucket for
three decades, said many are turning a blind eye to noise and other ecological
impacts of the energy project simply because it is branded green. “Wind
farm sounds really nice,” she said. “It’s a power plant. It really is.”

Her group, Nantucket Residents Against Turbines, accuses
<https://dockets.justia.com/docket/massachusetts/madce/1:2021cv11390/237553>
 the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which approved
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/11/interior-department-approves-first-large-scale-offshore-wind-farm-us/?itid=lk_inline_manual_88>
the
turbines, of failing to protect the right whale in its lawsuit. The effort
has attracted support from many conservatives.

David Stevenson, a former member of Donald Trump’s presidential transition
team, has helped Nantucket Residents Against Turbines with publicity. And
the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank based in
Austin, is representing
<https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/61618082/seafreeze-shoreside-inc-v-united-states-department-of-the-interior/>
fishing
groups that oppose turbines being built where they work.

“If we were talking about an oil and gas platform,” said Robert Henneke,
the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s executive director and general
counsel, “there’s absolutely no way that the federal government would be
allowing that kind of a construction project in this area.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/04/21/right-whales-biden/
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