Butler Flats Light (above) has marked the entrance to New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts since 1898. It was a clever bit of engineering by a marine architect using a caisson or box to pump out the water for construction, and every day it’s used for navigation by the famed scallop fleet, ferries, the occasional tall ship, and many other boats passing through the hurricane barrier. When the light was built, New Bedford still dominated the whaling industry, sending ships on long voyages to harpoon whales, melt their blubber into oil and return to fuel America.

Behind the light are two wind turbines, which provide electricity today without extinguishing any species. Despite the preposterous claims of fossil fuel industry funded politicians, there is no such thing as ‘windmill cancer’ and bird strikes are rare. But folks who live near the turbines complain that they cast shadows, are noisy or are ugly, so new wind turbines are now built far offshore, south of Martha’s Vineyard. The current project is known as Vineyard Wind, with 62 turbines each generating 13 megawatts when complete. Currently, there’s a pause after a blade broke, requiring inspections and clean up. Massachusetts recently committed to roughly quadrupling wind projects in the area.

The turbine assembly is based in New Bedford, with final installation of the towers at sea. Interestingly, to protect whales from construction noise, they create a circular curtain of bubbles rising up from around the foundation on the seabed. They got the idea from whales, who create a circular curtain of bubbles underneath schools of fish to herd them together into a bite sized meal. Thousands of locals work on the project, in a boon to the economy, and the first project will provide relatively cheap, green energy to 400,000 homes. I’ve observed the gimbaled tower segments and long blades being transported out to sea by huge construction ships on the same routes once used by whaling ships.

Progress is beautiful, especially when it helps save so many different species on earth from extinction. Back in the day, whalers would have argued that smelly whale oil was ‘indispensable’ and ‘higher quality’ than alternative fuels, and they resisted progress. Today, that seems absurd, although now the fossil fuel industry lies routinely to protect its profits. Ironically, during the Civil War, the US government helped launch the fossil fuel industry by buying their new fuel and taxing alternatives to save the Union. Now we need the government to help us transition quickly to green energy to save life on Earth and leave the smelly old fuels unburned.