Ralph Mace of Portsmouth asks the question of me and Phil Bartlett, “How much would you consider wind power a viable choice if the cabling were to pass through Westport not Portsmouth?” I personally would have no problem whatsoever with the cable from the Mayflower wind turbines running through Westport as I do not believe that it would cause any harm to the citizens of Westport. But, I would imagine that the costs of running the cable along this route would be so much higher than running up the Sakonnet River and through a small part of Portsmouth that it would be rejected on those grounds.

He asks further, “how do you propose, today, to store energy?” Wind energy out in the open ocean is much more constant that it is on land, so the problem is less serious. In addition storage systems, including batteries and hydrogen, are being improved and should be available to facilitate storage in the future, if not today.

Finally, he asks: “Most important, if we follow your approach, and nothing changes because of the behavior of countries like India and China, what should we do next?” China is admittedly still building coal-fired power plants, but it is also way ahead of us in building offshore wind power facilities and even providing some of the turbines to European projects. We are 20 years behind the times. Should we postpone action on our part until all the rest of the world has done its part? Is that the appropriate role for a country to once was and is trying again, after four years of disaster, to reassert a leadership role? I would prefer to act responsibly and hope that others might follow. As I said in a previous letter to the editor, it is this kind of parochial, NIMBY attitude that refuses to recognize the consequences of behaving irresponsibly relative to the broader interests of society that can lead to our mutual destruction.

David Cole

Westport