Editorial: “Wind Parks? Really?”

—Eric Bibler, WTS.com guest editor

I just discovered that Cape Wind’s 25-square mile industrial plant in Nantucket Sound is in fact not a “wind factory,” a “sprawling open air industrial wind plant” or even a “wind farm,” as I had supposed.

According to Cape Wind, it is officially a “Wind Park.”

This is an inspired choice of words!

I am already drafting letters to my local town selectmen asking if we can change a few names around here, such as: “Trash Park,” “Sewage Treatment Park,” “Coal Fired Electric Park” and “Maximum Security Correctional Park.” (Well, we don’t actually have one of those, but perhaps we can call the local jail a “Liberty Deprivation Park” –- or something like that.)

I’d also like to see if we can’t change the name of I-95, to call it an “Interstate Highway Park,” and I think we should have a few “Cell Tower Parks” and “Water Tower Parks,” don’t you? Perhaps that strip of the highway that runs past downtown Bridgeport, MA, can be rechristened a “Billboard Park” — to avoid any confusion about its true purpose.

Perhaps wind turbine noise should be renamed “Wind Turbine Mood Music.”

We could refer to the individual wind turbines as “Gleaming Energy Independence Mobiles.”

We could refer to the flicker effect as the “Wind Turbine Prankster Effect,” to recall the antics of an out-of-control eight-year-old who won’t lay off the light switch.

Perhaps the bird and bat kill aspects could be accepted as a “New Age Darwinian Wind Turbine Effect” that gives modern expression to the phenomenon of natural selection by encouraging the genetic selection of new super-species that are impervious to blows from the blades (moving at 180 mph), or to burst lungs from the abrupt changes in pressure.

We could paint numbers on the offshore ones and claim they are an invaluable aid to navigation –- if you can avoid hitting them.

And we could all try to exert some self-control and refer to wind turbines on mountain ridges as “Wind Turbine Landscape Accents.”