According to NASA, the earth is warming “at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.” The IPCC points out that, “Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact.”
According to EPA, the earth’s climate is changing due to a buildup of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere and the warming of the planet. That agency’s scientists point to changing temperature and precipitation patterns; increases in ocean temperatures, sea level, and acidity; melting glaciers and sea ice; changes in the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events and shifts in ecosystem characteristics, such as the length of the growing season, timing of flower blooms, and migration of birds; cumulatively defining the world’s climate today.
The evidence at hand cries out for attention and dedicated, appropriate response now, not at some point later in the future. Maine’s climate plan and related initiatives illustrate sound and thoughtful reaction to the climate crisis.
The United Nations climate action website (https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/causes-effects-climate-change) lists power generation, manufacturing and industry, cutting down trees, most forms of transportation, most food production in the world, powering buildings and excess consumption as drivers of climate change. Our relationship with the world governs our decisions in all these areas.
As expressed in research by Caitlin Morgan et.al. available at University of California Press titled Humans in/of/are nature: Re-embedding reality in sustainability sciences, “Biology, physics, Western social theory, and Indigenous scholarship all tell us that we are embedded in the natural world; to operate otherwise is a dangerous misconception and leads to the human-centered ecological crises we currently face.”
Upstream Watch’s Susie O’Keeffe recently noted that the climate and extinction crises call for us to move away from outdated “business-as-usual” thinking, “where nature is sacrificed for economic prosperity and human and ecological health, natural beauty and local businesses are forfeited for the benefit of short-term economic prosperity.”
Locating an offshore wind manufacturing, assembling and launching facility simply cannot use an outmoded, business-as-usual approach to decision-making. To get this decision right means fully embracing the indisputable fact that humans are part of nature. Totally removing all vegetation and wildlife from 100 acres on Sears Island, then harvesting more than one million cubic yards of soil where all that life once flourished, flies in the face of a climate change informed decision.
We understand that locating an offshore wind manufacturing facility on Sears Island has business appeal. The Sears Island site has favorable topography, room for expansion and deep water just offshore. But the ecological harm, the climate change harm from that development is far too great a price to pay for the convenience and desirability of business-as-usual. Not to mention the harm to the region’s environment-based economy if Sears Island development expands as proponents project.
All available expert engineering undertaken to date indisputably shows that a robust offshore wind manufacturing, assembling and launching facility can be built at Mack Point and that the facility there can achieve Maine’s laudable offshore wind objectives. The minimal dredging needed in no way compares to the devastation at Sears Island. Mack Point development reuses and repurposes legacy industrial land that offers little environmental benefit in its current state.
The clear choice, if we reject the “human-first, human-separate” mentality and approach the matter knowing humans are utterly, completely dependent on the vigorous web of life in the natural world, the clear choice is Mack Point.
Alliance for Sears Island 