…does not necessarily mean the Green Bay Packers. I previously wrote about how some millionaires with million-dollar water views were using the language and the tactics of the environmental movement to stop (wait for it…) a clean energy project. Windmills off Cape Code, to be specific, set up in the Nantucket Shoals.
Now their fund-raising manual has been leaked to the Boston Globe. Unfortunately, the text of their manual is not available online, but the excerpts are very funny. If you want a reliable guide to shmoozing people with fat wallets and heads, you owe it to yourself to look. Some highlights:
- Gifts of $5,000 are considered “tokens”; fundraisers are instructed to regard $250,000 as the minimum.
- 94% of the group’s funds came from donations of $20,000 or more. If that’s grass roots, the grass is pretty darn tall.
- The driving force and source of funding is Bill Koch, investor, sportsman, and bon vivant. He does not want his view spoiled, and neither do his neighbors.
You have already heard about NIMBYs. How about BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.
Having just retired from the electric utility industry, NIMBY and BANANA are soon to be replaced by NOPE (not on planet Earth).
The windmills obviously create a significant externality, and they aren’t an economically efficient way to generate electricity in the first place.