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Jim Gordon's Long Fight for Offshore Wind Power
From Douglas Struck | 04:32
Offshore wind farms are sprouting up off Asia and Europe. But Jim Gordon has been fighting to build the nation's first offshore wind farm for 14 years.
Jim Gordon first proposed Cape Wind, a "farm" of 130 wind turbines to be planted off Cape Cod, 14 years ago. Since then, he has fought his way through 26 court battles, regulatory agencies from native American tribes to an alphabet soup of federal and state agencies-- and largely won them all. He has been opposed, at times, by the heaviest of political opponents-- Edward Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, Mitt Romney, John Kerry, the FAA, a local Air Force Base, a native Wampanoag Tribe, fishermen, the Cape Cod ferry service and Robert Kennedy Jr. His largest remaining opponent is funded by one of the Koch brothers.
This interview of Gordon and his opposition gives the listener a sense of the frustration he has in the interminable delays that are blocking offshore wind development in the United States.
The piece was created for The Daily Climate by Doug Struck, a Boston-based environmental reporter.
Casta Rican coffee farmers take to greener way to make a sweeter cup
From Douglas Struck | 05:49
Costa Rica Coffee Growers
On a modest family coffee farm on a cloud-hugged hillside of Costa Rica, Eulogio Jimenez Porras is trying to get out from the grips of the big coffee houses that dictate a traditional way of processing coffee beans. Eulogio and other small farmers have embraced the "honey process" that dries coffee beans naturally, without the volume of water that can wash acids and nutrients into local waterways. This "honey process" produces a coffee that is becoming a niche rage in gourmet coffee houses, and also is better for the environment.