Welcome t the Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien podcast, where we g behind the scenes of the Arizona PBS documentary series Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien.

We'll discuss the challenges, the discoveries, and the things you might not get from watching the TV series alone.

I'm your host, Elise Hu and joining me on this podcast is the veteran science journalist himself, Miles O'Brien.

On this episode, we talk about clean energy by looking at the wind industr in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and its tensions with the area's powerful fishing community.

Miles, welcome back in.

Thanks for joining me.

Good to be with you, Elise.

All right.

Well, now, the problem in thi episode is the balance between environmental responsibility and economic revival.

Talk with u about how that plays out here.

Well, I live at, Elise, I should tell everybody probably, I'd say total about 30 miles from these giant wind turbines, which are just beyond Martha's Vineyard.

I'm in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and so I was particularl interested in this whole project because it was kind of right in my backyard as it evolved and really took shape, really got going during the the Biden administration.

And these turbines are, you know, kind of amazing.

They're twice as big as anything you see on land.

You don't see them as you're on shore because they're 15 miles or kind of over the horizon, but they are tremendous.

And this stat, which stuck with me, just kind of blows my mind that one revolution of one blade on one turbine powers one home for one day.

So when you start, you know, extrapolating that out to the amount of wind that wa on its way to being constructed, and we can talk about why that isn't happening now, you can see why it would hav a tremendous impact on the grid along the eastern seaboard of the United States, where, of course, energy use the demand is up.

We can talk about all the reasons for that.

Whether it's electric vehicles or data centers.

And there are very few green alternatives in this part of the world beyond this.

We are an area that has a lot of wind.

And so this became an idea which which took hold and now is kind of a bit become, shall we say, because of the political and economic stresses.

Yeah And we're going to get to that.

But first I'd love to talk about our innovator in this episode, Mayor Jon Mitchell.

What a story, what a trajectory his family has been on.

Yeah.

Well, you know, he's a he's a New Bedford native.

He he became an attorney, became a US attorney.

And he was the lead prosecutor going after a notorious gangster by the name of Whitey Bulger, who most a lot of people might recognize and remember that name.

But, you know, he it was fictionalized but made famous in the movie The Departed.

But basically, what you've got is a career prosecutor who is going after this, you know, this notorious gangster and was recruited in the midst of tha to become mayor of New Bedford.

And he put the papers in and decided to run.

And evidently, maybe Whitey Bulger was paying attention, but he he was arrested shortly thereafter.

So he kind of missed out on the the fun if you will.

But after all those years of looking for him anyway, he he got into New Bedford and just immediately latched onto this idea of offshore wind.

He was kind of an early adopter to this notion, to the idea.

He felt like this was a, you know, this is a community that has had all kinds of economic hardship, as a lot of the textile industries and industry in general left New Bedford.

And he grew up at a time in the cit when it was really on the ropes.

And the fishing community has survived and done okay, but otherwis the economy there has suffered.

And he felt that this wa the perfect geographic location to stage the construction of these wind turbines.

And so he just kept pushing and pushing.

He thought it would take just a few years.

And here we are many years later.

Some of it is built, but there's still more to do.

Wow.

I feel like that Whitey Bulger story could have been an easy rabbit hole where you could have gotten off topic.

Were there any side stories that came up from the episode that you had to resist?

Yeah, he you know, he he has a huge background, family members who were fishermen and people who were, you know, adversely impacted.

He had he had ancestors who had died at sea.

It was a very colorful background.

And he knew the history of New Bedford well which at one time New Bedford in the 19th century was the wealthiest city in this hemisphere.

Maybe the world because of whaling.

It's the whaling community.

And if you if you've read Moby Dick, it's all comes out of, you know, New Bedford.

It plays a big part in all of it.

And so, you know, so Melville was there and whaling, of course.

What what were whales used for?

They were used befor fossil fuels for there to light city streets in the eastern seaboard and elsewhere.

And so interestingly New Bedford in the 19th century, early 19th century was kind of a center of, of energy production.

And so here it is kind of coming full circl to a renewable kind of energy.

And so the mayor thought that was a perfect and poetic turn to make the city once again focused in this direction.

Let's take a look at a clip.

These giant offshore windmills are about twic the size of those built on land.

That combined with stronger, steadier wins over the ocean, allow them to generate more energy.

Inside the turbine, magnets rotate past coils of wire, generating electricity.

Watching that clip, Miles, it seems lik this is such a great solution.

But as we find out in this episode, not everyone is on board.

So walk me through the arguments against offshore wind.

Well it begins with the fishing fleet in New Bedford, and the mayor has to be careful about this, because this is a big part of his constituency.

And the scallo industry in New Bedford is not to be trifled with.

It is the largest.

It's actually the most lucrative port in North America.

And by virtue of the scallop catch, and scallops are very valuable.

They're kind of a hot dish right now, so to speak.

They used to be kind of a a side dish, and now they move to the center of the plate, as the mayor put it.

And the scallops were concerned that these wind turbines would get in the way of their areas where they go and scrape for scallops.

And so there was a lot of back and forth in the sighting of these turbines and the distance apart that each of these monopoles these big poles, would be placed in order to accommodate the fishing fleet.

And generally speaking, there's some grudging acceptance, but there's quite a bit of still concern and anger among fishermen about offshore wind.

The truth is, though, it hasn't really affected their catch in any way, shape or form.

The proof is in the scallops, so to speak, and so that that that problem seems to be somewhat managed.

But meanwhile, the change of the administration in Washington is really where things got very sticky for New Bedford and for Mayor Mitchell and for all the wind turbine manufacturers and builders, because Donald Trump has a particular animus toward wind as.

Yeah, those clips showed that, yeah, he really doesn't like wind.

And this goes back to, you know, we're not inside his mind, God forbid.

But this goes back to some wind turbines that were built near his golf course that he owns in Scotland.

And he felt that that ruined his view.

Ever since that, he's been very much a vocal opponent of wind and has done, he and his administration hav aggressively tried to shut down existing construction, revok leases, and stop the production of offshore wind along the East coast.

And it's, you know, been a pretty successful campaign, which is unfortunate because there were big plans on pape that would have provided energy.

From where I sit in New England, all the way down to the Mid-Atlantic states.

And now it's kind of unclear where that power is going to come from at a time where demand just goes up and up.

Yeah.

You just mentioned that those efforts to kind of stop the win projects have been successful.

But also in the episode, you said that judges around the country have been able to push back against some of the efforts to stop the wind projects.

Where is that at?

It's an ongoing thing.

It goes back and forth and, you know, it seems like every ruling is met with another decree from various agencies in Washington that have been tryin to go after it for a long time, the administratio and its supporters for claiming that wind turbines were killing whales.

And I found that rathe interesting and a little bit odd because I didn't quite understand the connection, particularly since there were pictures that they showed of whales that had washed up on beaches, dead whales, and yet these whales had die before the construction began.

So I was a little, little fel a little a little fishy, Elise.

And so in fact, check so I did.

I checked that one.

And it turns out that there's no evidence whatsoever that the wind turbines have don anything to impact the whales.

If you really want to save the whales, you should slow down the ships in the shipping lanes on the east coast, which is something that we hav not done or perhaps reduce the you know, there are literally million of lobster traps in the Gulf of Maine which tangle up these animals, these right whales, which are right on the verge of extinction.

So there are real reasons that they're going instinct, but extinct But it's not the wind turbines.

So that that became the argument.

And then more recently, the argument has been that these wind turbines would somehow undermine national security and defense because it would interfere with radar systems, which, again, doesn't really pass the smell test when you look into it.

So basically you've got an administratio that just it doesn't want wind.

And so that has you know, despite judges pushing back, it has certainly becalme the interest for a little while.

We'll see what happens as time goes on, because it is a solution that that really offers a nice green alternativ for the East Coast of the U.S.

at least In this episode, you are directly addressin how the current administration and the president is actively against this particular climate solution.

I'm curious how you decide when it's important to just explicitly point out ho politics are playing into policy making these crise and their potential solutions.

Well, wouldn't it be nice, Elise, if you know science, if technology, if problem and their solutions could live outside the political world, right, that would be that would be a interesting world we'd live in.

But of course, there are political interests always.

And you always have to follow the money.

And we have a system in Washington that has an awful lot of fossil fuel money floating around that influences political decisions in ways that adversely impact a lot of green solutions, and this is one of them.

And so I think when you're doing a show that looks at solutions, you have to be honest and unblinking at the reality of how politics can get in the way of good ideas.

And this feels like a classi kind of a poster child for that.

You have you have a good idea.

It's it's being implemented.

And yet the politics of the day are telling you not to do it.

So again, what where I sit, what's keeping the lights on for me right now is probably a natural gas power plant.

I mean, the nuclear plants have been slowly but surely being retired in my part of the world.

The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant used to be a big player where I am.

But now, as demand increases, where is that going to come from?

New England is not a good, you know, great solar place.

It's not like being in a place like Phoenix, for example.

Right?

But we do have wind here and we do have an ocean.

And it's actually when you start thinking about connecting big power lines to the grid, it's a lot easier to put them, bury them under the ocean than try to get them through neighborhoods.

So there's a lot of reasons this makes sense, and I'm just hopin that cooler heads will prevail and ultimately good ideas for win the day.

And it's truly impressive just how much power the windmills generate.

Which leads me to another clip that we want to show folks of Gary Yerman and his company Sea Services.

My voyage aboard Gary's boat gave me my first chance to see and hea these giant windmills up close.

If you listen carefully, can hear a woosh!

Tips of those blades are moving about 120 miles an hour.

And here's a rule of thumb to remember one revolution of one blade on one turbine towers.

One house for one day.

So there goes my house.

I'm done.

For the day.

When we wash that clip, miles, it just really puts into sharp relief how much potential wind energy is there on the US coast.

Yeah, you can almost taste it right out there.

It was really you know, I got to say, Elise, Gary Yerma is a very interesting character.

He is a dyed in the wool Trump supporter, like so many of these fishermen and decision after decision from the Trump administration has adversely impacted his business, Sea Services.

And yet he remains a supporter of the president, thinking that, as he told me, he's, you know, he's a good negotiator.

He's going to come up with some better plan.

So it's interesting to me that he would feel that way.

But but there you have it to go out there.

And I'd had the good fortun to fly a little plane out there and see them kind of flying, almost eye level with them.

But to be on the surface o the ocean in a fairly small boat underneath one of those thing was just kind of blew me away.

I really didn't understand the scale of it all until I was there, and it's the kind of thing that people aren't seeing.

I think if they saw it and understood the the power inheren in all of these giant windmills, they might be a little less skeptical of its potential and what it can do to power the grid.

You mentioned this, and we finally get to see you as a pilot in this episode, which is something that you have done for decades, a real passion of yours.

So because we hav the opportunity on this podcast, tell me a little bit about your history and your family's history as pilots.

Yeah.

Well, so both my maternal and paternal grandfather were private pilot and my, my maternal grandfather who lived in Boston, he was a wool trader.

He had his own plane, and he used the plane to go to mills in upstate New York and all throughout New England to sell wool.

And he beat his competitors to the punch.

And my father was a private pilot.

And so I kind of learned to fly without being able to look over the instrument panel.

And so by the time I went to get my license, I had I had a lot of, you know, unlogged hours, so to speak.

And when I went to go get my instrument rating, which is when you don't look out the window, they said, it looks like you've done this before.

And I said, well, actually, that's how I learned.

Thats all I could see.

so I have been flying I got my license in 1988, and I've owned airplanes over the years.

When I lost my arm back in 2014, I had to relearn how to fly with one arm, which was kind of when you think about all the things you have to go through when you when you're minus a limb like this, it was kind of the last obstacle or goal that I wanted to achieve was to get back to normalcy was to get my pilot's license.

So I do.

I still still fly and I still have my license, and I, I get great joy out of it.

And it also it informs my reporting not not only can I go out and look at wind turbines, but it allows me to report on aviation and, you know, the related subjects that I get involved in.

Love it.

Love to see it.

Miles what are some of the challenges that you and the team face in telling this story, if any?

Well, this this was a hard on just to keep up with the latest, you know, decrees and federal rulings and responses and whether the, you know, the companie were going to continue forward.

And, you know, here we are with a relativel long lead time on these Resolve to Solve episodes.

And it's a very dynamic situation.

So the challenge was trying to write something that was fresh and current and yet could stay on the shelf a little while.

And so I think we accomplished it.

And we'll see.

I mean, maybe, maybe by the time it airs, there'll be another development, maybe good or bad, who knows?

Before we let you go, as we like to ask you at the end of these episodes, what practical action items do you suggest for our viewers and listeners after they hav learned about these solutions?

Well, just number one, do not take at face value statements that things like solar and wind are not ready for prime time.

They are.

They really are.

They are cost effective and they are with battery storage online which has dramatically improved in recent year more than people had expected.

The problems with intermittency, you know, with the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining are not as significant as they were in the past.

And so the grid can be stable with a lot of wind and solar on it then we ever have had before.

But I do think the one thing I want people to remember is that there's really no silver bullet to this.

When we look at solutions to power our world that are not going to impact the climate we need to look at everything.

And that includes wind and solar and that includes nuclear power.

And we have another episode which we're going to talk about soon on geothermal power.

There are lots of ways we can keep the lights on and the data centers going without burning fossil fuels.

And I want people to to be smart about that.

And as I always say, it's important when you go to decide who to vote for.

Find out where they stand on this stuff.

Because ultimately, as this piece points out, when politics comes to play, good ideas can get derailed and it can be unfortunate.

An important reminder, Miles.

As usual, I have learned so much from talking with you about this episode and stay tuned, listeners and viewers, we have more to come.

Miles, thanks so much.

You're welcome.

Elise.

Resolve to Solve with Miles O'Brien is a co-productio of Mobias Media and Arizona PBS.

You can watch the show at.

azpbs.org/resolvetosolve.

This podcast is a productio of Central Sound at Arizona PBS.

Our video editors are Matthew Anderson and Macie Logan.

We get audio support from Joe Miller and Daniel Bevc.

Our producer is Anna Williams.

Executive producers Alex Kosiorek, Carol Yancho Scott Woelfel and Miles O'Brien.

I'm your host Elise Hu.

Thanks for joining us.