Windmills and unicorns in San Luis Obispo County

November 25, 2025

OPINION by MANDY DAVIS

We live in a place that is pristine, beautiful beyond compare and one might even say is magical. A place where rocky headlands meet the sea in turbulent majesty, where rolling golden hills become verdant and poppy-filled in spring and where the coastal redwoods create places so magical that one would expect to come across a unicorn or maybe a wood gnome or two peeking from behind the fairy rings and lush ferns. San Luis Obispo County is a place to be cherished and protected… a place unlike any other

We all love our home and it’s magic. It elicits a kind of creativity we all appreciate, except when it comes to the folks we expect to protect it and ensure its future is bright and filled with promise. Magical thinking and “creative communication’ about reality (most of us just call it lying) should not and cannot be tolerated. We all love the concept of unicorns, but to have a public servant embrace one instead of the reality of the real natural beauty we are stewards of is not only dangerous but destructive.

The unicorn I speak of is the offshore wind project, one that many of our state politicians and SLO County Supervisor Bruce Gibson locally embrace. It’s shiny and sparkly, with shimmering rainbow hues created by a greedy and manipulating industry and painted as such with promises of “green, reliable, affordable and world saving”. but after all, let’s face it folks, it is just a fantasy proffered to a public desperate for unicorns in a sometimes dark and unpleasant world story…a fairy tale,

It’s understandable that folks want to embrace the fairy tale…but let’s get real, The only magic we need to embrace is the one that already exists here, our pristine oceans, our beautiful coastal communities and our lovely quaint harbors. To do otherwise in favor of an illusion deftly created for public consumption would be its own form of delusional insanity.

To lie (remember creative communication?) to convince a trusting public that the unicorn is real;  that his own brand of magical thinking is beneficial to our lives, is not just delusional it is blindly self serving and destructive to everyone’s lives here on the Central Coast…and this is precisely what Bruce Gibson has done for years.

Case in point, recently in a NCAC meeting county supervisor Bruce Gibson told the participants that the offshore wind industrial port project(s) on the central coast were “a done deal’. In what reality is he living when he decides that an industrial port project is a “done deal” when the Port San Luis port commissioners haven’t even decided to accept a grant from the state meant to convince them to “mature” the project…an attempt by the state to push a project that is vastly opposed by a knowing local public?

It is time that Bruce awakens from his little fantasy and quits trying to manipulate the public in an untenable abuse of power. To lie to the public may be common in the world of politics and power brokering, but it is not acceptable to those of us whose lives he impacts.

It’s time to recognize that floating offshore wind is a boondoggle…a fairy tale of the most destructive and dark kind. It’s time we demand our public servants (after al, that’s what politicians are) listen to their constituents, act ethically and respect our right to not be lied to..It’s time that everyone realize the destructive potential of believing the offshore wind fairy tale and stop the industrialization of our oceans and coastline now.

It’s time we wake up and write a new, healthy chapter in the real fairy tale that is our beautiful Central Coast.

Mandy Davis is the president of REACT Alliance and a Morro Bay resident. REACT Alliance is a local organization established to educate and inform the public about the issues involved with offshore wind.