“Research consistently demonstrates that people who maintain a strong connection with coastal environments experience greater happiness, life satisfaction, and overall psychological health [3][4].”

In 2017, a total of seventeen North Atlantic right whales died. Unbeknownst to many, in 2017 Deepwater Wind (now Ørsted) also secured permission to disturb marine mammals—including 105 critically endangered North Atlantic right whales (NARW)—within Lease Area 0486.

“If critics want to expose a lack of transparency and misleading information, they should look to the offshore wind industry. Companies with nothing to hide would welcome the chance to explain the risks and would release the recordings afterward.”

“Desperate times often require desperate measures, but large-scale, unproven, and invasive measures, often cause unforeseen harm. The ocean’s finite and irreplaceable resources can disappear. Wind can dissipate. Once destroyed, uniquely productive habitats and breeding grounds that sustain life on earth may not return.”

“Killing endangered whales, even inadvertently, violates the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The offshore wind companies have recently requested multiple Incidental Take Requests (ITRs). If granted, these authorizations will permit the legal harassment of marine mammals, even to the point of death.”

“The fossil-fuel companies have made billions of dollars constructing offshore wind projects in Europe. Their past oil and gas exploration provides the requisite expertise for this development. Because their business plan relies on constructing new projects, not electricity generation per se, they perpetually seek new markets. Our eastern seaboard constitutes an untapped frontier, open for business and ready for exploitation.”

“The notion that we humans can intervene in the ocean at a colossal scale and drive other species to extinction without harming ourselves seems, if not perversely arrogant, then excessively naive. Short-circuiting environmental laws in the name of solving our climate crisis will leave us vulnerable in the future; once de-clawed, they will no longer protect either biodiversity or what remains of our natural world.”

A majority of citizens support urgent action on climate change, but the current plan to industrialize 22 million acres of the Atlantic Ocean with wind turbines contradicts both President Biden’s executive order and environmental laws. The plan lacks sufficient evidence of safety or efficacy, risks biodiversity loss, and could exacerbate the crisis instead of addressing it. NOAA’s authorization for offshore wind companies to harass endangered North Atlantic right whales jeopardizes their survival, directly undermining the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act.