Can't Democrats all just get along?
The administration of Governor Deval Patrick, in a sharp disagreement with Patrick’s handpicked Senate appointee, said yesterday that it would be a mistake for President Obama to grant US Senator Paul G. Kirk Jr.’s request to delay federal approval of the Cape Wind project.In a letter to Obama earlier this month, Kirk, who has largely shied away from divisive issues during his two months in office, urged the Obama administration to hold off on a decision until a federal panel can devise comprehensive guidelines for development in the nation’s waters. But officials from the Patrick administration said the governor strongly disagrees with Kirk’s request and urges quick approval. “After eight years of thorough review and as the world convenes shortly in Copenhagen to tackle climate change, the governor believes the time is now to move forward with this landmark clean energy project - the only offshore wind project that has the potential to be built in President Obama’s first term,’’ Patrick’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, Ian A. Bowles, said in a statement yesterday.
US Representative Edward J. Markey, who chairs a key congressional committee on energy independence and global warming, has, like Patrick, strongly backed Cape Wind. In a letter sent to the Obama administration on Nov. 9, three days before Kirk’s letter to the president, Markey urged the administration to approve Cape Wind before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen on Dec. 7.
Markey wrote that approving the project would “send a strong message to international negotiators about the United States’ commitment to developing sources of clean energy and reducing global warming pollution.’’
Supporters of Cape Wind criticized Kirk’s request as an attempt to delay further a project that has been repeatedly challenged in the Legislature, Congress, and the courts. Mark Rodgers, a spokesman for Cape Wind, which is developing the project, said he was confident that the Obama administration would reject Kirk’s request based on the president’s strong support for renewable energy projects.
UPDATE: From the Globe and the Wall Street Journal.
SECOND UPDATE: From the Boston Herald and the Daily Free Press.
THIRD UPDATE: More from CNN, the Globe and Herald.
