Powering Change: Offshore Wind

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In the wind-swept waters off the New England coast, scientists, city officials and entrepreneurs are working to help humanity adapt to and fight back against a rapidly warming planet.

Miles O’Brien heads to New Bedford, Massachusetts, a storied former whaling port reinventing itself nearly two centuries later as an offshore wind hub.

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell has spent more than a decade betting his city’s future on clean energy, navigating fierce political opposition, regulatory headwinds and an aggressive federal campaign to halt offshore wind development. The turbines are turning now, sending clean electricity into the grid, but the battles are far from over.

O’Brien explores the real tensions between the wind industry and the city’s powerful fishing community, meeting the scallop fishermen worried about their livelihoods, the marine biologists studying the turbines’ impact on ocean life and a veteran fishing captain who decided to stop fighting the wind and start working with it.

O’Brien discovers the tools to address our most urgent climate challenges already exist. The question is whether we have the will, and the wisdom, to use them before it’s too late.

 
Miles O'Brien and Elise Hu

The “Resolve to Solve with Miles O’Brien Podcast” is the official companion podcast of the documentary series.

In this podcast episode, we dive into the politics of the offshore wind industry in New Bedford, Massachusetts, practically in Miles’s own backyard.

A town once known for its whaling industry is now becoming the poster child for renewable energy. In the television episode, we see Miles in action as a pilot, and here on the podcast, he tells us all about his and his family’s history in the sky.

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Jon Mitchell, Mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts

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