01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, January 3, 2006

THE CRITICALLY acclaimed HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm, based on the life of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, tells the tale of a fabulously rich, petty and self-absorbed Hollywood writer who blunders into various disasters. It's often hilarious, the best thing on TV. But nothing this season was as deliciously funny as the script that real life has been writing for him.

Laurie David, the wife of the real Larry David, is a global-warming crusader who rails against SUVs and preaches the virtues of energy-saving light bulbs. Meanwhile, she lives in multiple houses and flies around in private jets that burn more fuel than the average person could save in a lifetime of switching off lights.

The Davids own a summer home on Martha's Vineyard, where they heard from authorities for building a 21-by-16-foot stage and a large stone-and-concrete barbecue pit near protected wetlands, while ripping up native vegetation and planting sodded grass. A neighbor reportedly asserted that the Davids went ahead on their construction without the proper permits to be ready for a visit by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He had inspired Mrs. David to become an environmental "activist."

It's human nature: The powerful, from Hollywood to Washington to Paris, love to posture as the moral superiors of others, but often do what they darn well please in their own lives.

The Davids' story is sit-com stuff. Far more damaging to the public is the seeming hypocrisy of their hero Mr. Kennedy -- and his wealthy allies in the quest to kill the proposed Cape Wind project.

Cape Wind Associates Inc. wants to build one of the world's largest wind projects in Nantucket Sound. Nearly five miles away from the nearest shore, but close enough to be economically feasible, making use of the stiff breezes that blow through the sound, it would produce enough clean, renewable energy to meet 70 percent of the Cape and Islands' electrical-energy needs year round.

That's energy that would not need to be produced by the polluting oil-burning Mirant Plant, on the Cape Cod Canal, or at the polluting coal-fired Brayton Point, in Somerset, or other power plants in New England fired by very expensive natural gas.

If you think that sounds like exactly the kind of project the global-warming doomsayers have been advocating for years, you're right. But the Beautiful People's environmentalism often stops, it seems, at their own backyards.

The Kennedys' ancestral estate is in Hyannisport, on Cape Cod, and were the turbines installed, Uncle Teddy and company might be able -- on very clear days -- to detect bumps on the horizon. This, they apparently believe, would spoil their water view. They also fear that the turbines might make their sailing less pleasant. And so, because of the political clout of the Kennedys and fellow owners of one of the world's priciest stretches of real estate, all sorts of political maneuvers have been undertaken to stop Cape Wind cold.

It is Robert Kennedy's job, it seems, to couch such striking selfishness in the language of compassionate environmentalism. He did so in The New York Times on Dec. 16 ("An Ill Wind Off Cape Cod"), making wind power sound like one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse. Wind turbines, he warned, would: slice and dice "migrating song birds and sea ducks"; be too noisy; generate electricity at too high a price; waste taxpayers' money; drain $1 billion worth of tourism from Cape Cod and cost 2,533 jobs; have to be equipped with flashing warning lights that would "steal the stars and nighttime views"; gravely endanger boats in fog and storms; and so on.

But he's not against wind power, mind you! It just can't be introduced into the Nantucket Sound "wilderness," which Americans (especially, one presumes, members of the yachting class) need, to "renew our spirits and reconnect ourselves to the common history of our nation, humanity and to God."

In his piece, Mr. Kennedy advanced the rather novel theory that "our most important wildernesses are those that are closest to our densest population centers, like Nantucket Sound." But if pristine areas and populated regions are both off-limits to energy development, someone afflicted with a logical mind might ask, What's left?

Some environmentalists aren't buying Mr. Kennedy's pitch.

"Nantucket Sound is not a pristine wilderness. It is among the busiest shipping channels on the East Coast and is surrounded by heavily populated communities. Cape Wind, at worst, constitutes a relatively minor instrusion upon this already developed landscape," wrote Ted Norhaus and Michael Shellenberger, in The San Francisco Chronicle ("Arctic battle should move to Hyannis Port," Dec. 21).

Worried about global warming, the authors urged "the national environmental community to condemn Kennedy's anti-wind crusade and make the development of Cape Wind one of its highest political priorities." And they urged Mr. Kennedy to resign as senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

That seems unlikely. In the real world, money and power speak with great authority. The rich want their water views and sailing vistas unimpeded, and someone else, somewhere else, can pay the price for protecting the environment.

Edward Achorn is The Journal's deputy editorial-pages editor. His e-mail address is eachorn@projo.com.