Tag Archives: Mary Chalke

Energy industry uses whale activists to aid anti-wind farm strategy, experts say

One night in late March, J Timmons Roberts, a professor of environmental studies at Brown University, stepped in to a high school gymnasium in a small seaside town in Rhode Island. He was there to speak at a town hall aimed at allaying concerns about a local offshore windfarm. In the front row, he noticed a woman dressed as a whale, holding a sign that read “Save Me!” The woman in the front row was Mary Chalke, co-founder of the Save Right Whales Coalition (SRWC), a group of organizations across the east coast that oppose offshore wind projects, arguing they pose an existential risk to the endangered North American right whale. That night at the town hall, Roberts also spotted Elizabeth Knight, who founded Green Oceans earlier this year, another anti-wind organization in Rhode Island. Roberts said he felt compassion for Knight. “She thinks a train wreck is coming,” said Roberts. >click to read< 10:17

Right whale coalition calls for moratorium of offshore wind farm turbines

A local citizens group has announced the creation of the Save Right Whales Coalition, which is determined to stop offshore wind turbine projects that members say could harm whales. “Any species whose numbers are this low requires that we not take any additional action that could harm these whales,” political and environmental author and activist Michael Shellenberger said of the endangered North Atlantic right whales. “Particularly given that we have an abundance of nuclear and natural gas resources that would provide a sufficient alternative to these large industrial wind turbines.” >click to read< 13:49

CHA-CHING!!! Vineyard Wind to pay town $34.4 million in mitigation money

Vineyard Wind has agreed to pay the town $34.4 million over the next 45 years as financial mitigation for the 84-turbine offshore wind farm it’s proposed 14 miles southwest of Madaket that some town officials, preservationists, fishermen and environmentalists see as potentially environmentally and visually devastating. But Mary Chalke sees it as the least they can do. No amount of money or mitigation, she said, can reverse the environmental impact the wind farm will have on the marine animals that inhabit the waters around the island ,,, >click to read< 12:14