Baltimore Sun to Eastern Shore: Drop Dead

The Ivory Tower Liberals of the Editorial Board again display their disdain for all things Delmarva

The Ivory Tower elitists over at the Baltimore Sun Editorial Board are at it again.

This time, the Baltimore-area liberals are bemoaning the fact that a third span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge might get built. They’re reasoning? Climate change:

But shockingly missing from the Draft Environmental Impact Statement is much anticipation about how climate change may fundamentally alter the future and whether it’s in Maryland’s best interest to accommodate and encourage continued growth in the very region of the state most vulnerable to rising tides and worsening storms. What if, for example, major floods are in the future? What if shore communities have inadequately prepared for rising waters, both from the Atlantic Ocean and bay tributaries? What if we are setting ourselves up for a deeper disaster? And what if maintaining some level of cap on traffic provided the most available and cost-effective means to guard against this very real possibility?

These are real words written by real people who think they should be taken seriously. No wonder Frank De Fillippo wrote that The Sun has always been the paper of the elitists.

The Sun is right to a point. Climate change is not part of the discussion as it relates to the third span. Nor should it been. The need for a third span isn’t news, nor is it related to the environment. It’s related to the quality of life of people who live on both sides of the shore.

None of this is news. These are some of the same issues I wrote about in 2008.

A new Bay Bridge is needed for people who live on the shore and commute to the Western Shore. A new Bay Bridge is needed for people who live on the shore and go to a grocery store, so they can get food delivered in a timely manner. A new Bay Bridge is needed for businesses that do business on both sides of the shore. A new Bay Bridge is needed for people who live on the Eastern Shore and need emergency medical attention on the Western Shore. A new Bay Bridge is needed for farmers on the Eastern Shore who want to have their goods trucked to supermarkets on the Western Shore.

Making sure that people have jobs, making sure that people can eat, making sure that people can receive prompt medical attention are all very important things. They can be life and death matters when traffic is backed up and people sit for hours trying to get to the other side.

But, of course, the Ivory Tower elitists on the Sun Editorial Board don’t actually care about that. They care about scoring cheap political points about climate change. Which will not at all be affected by building a new bridge.

Ironically, climate change would be partially improved by the new bridge because relieving traffic will alleviate a certain level of ground-level pollution.

As part of their argument to “cap” traffic by not building a bridge, they suggest that the new bridge will create more waterfront development on the Eastern Shore. That argument, of course, doesn’t exactly pan out. The development either will or will not happen with or without a bridge. If the Sun wants to make an argument about the evils of waterfront development, that’s an unrelated and completely separate argument that is unrelated to the Bridge.

Then, the Board ham-hands this critique into the piece:

It’s clear that some Marylanders are in denial about climate. The resistance of Ocean City’s elected officials to building wind turbines a dozen miles or more offshore offers the most apparent evidence of this.

This of course is another bad-faith argument from a group predicated on bad faith. Ocean City’s opposition to wind turbines offshore has everything to do with the quality of life of their residents and visitors. The turbines will be an eyesore. They will, potentially, change the local weather. They will potentially create audio pollution. And of course, it may kill birds.

And even that doesn’t take into account the fact that the windmills are a corporatist racket.

The real genesis of the Editorial Board’s opposition has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with opposition to anything that helps people out on the Eastern Shore. The Shore might as well be on Mars as far as Tricia Bishop and the rest of her band of privileged leftist yuppies is concerned. They don’t care whether the people on the Eastern Shore live or die, they just want the opportunity to score cheap political points by using their suffering as a political pawn.

None of this is news, regarding the ineptitude and bigotry of the Sun Editorial Board. But the case for the entire Editorial Board to be fired and replaced continues to build.