Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act Office: Deerin Babb-Brott

Deerin Babb-Brott of Massachusetts's Environmental Policy Office is up next. He grew up down the road in Camden.

He begins with two points:

Regulations need context.

This is not about science and technology, but about public trust.

I suspect that the latter point might have grown out of his state's experience with Cape Wind. The former, I hope, is a reference to some bureaucrats' and activists' tendency to lose the big-picture value of renewable projects: sure, a wind turbine might disturb a few square meters of ocean floor, but it's also displacing the need to burn tons of fossil fuels somewhere else upwind from us. I'm reminded of people here in Maine who treat land-based wind power projects as though they were equivalent to Wal-Mart stores, and protest the projects based on the fact that wind turbine construction requires the removal of some trees and the reconstruction of some logging roads.

He notes that MA has resolved differences and gained the public's trust for two new liquefied LNG terminals, thanks to extraordinary mitigation measures. Wind power projects have not successfully gained the public trust, even though most would probably agree that wind power is environmentally preferable to burning natural gas.

Gov. Patrick signed the MA Oceans Act of 2008 a few weeks ago: a comprehensive plan for state waters management, support renewable energy development, and balance natural resource preservation with traditional and new uses. A plan will be drafted by summer 2009, with final plan scheduled to be complete by Dec. 31, 2009.