Seaport Developer ‘Doubts’ Climate Change, Cites YouTube Videos

Photo (Cropped) by Yvette Wohn on Flickr/Creative Commons

Even as the city is sounding the alarm on climate change’s impact on the future of life in Boston, one major developer remains skeptical.

John B. Hynes III is the CEO and managing partner of Boston Global Investors, which is developing much of the 23-acre, $3.5 billion Seaport Square project in South Boston. And while he’s willing to build to state and local officials’ specifications, Hynes doesn’t buy into the whole hullabaloo of raising sea levels and the like.

“I have my doubts,” Hynes told the Herald. “The global warming phenomenon that everybody’s worried about is nothing more than historic cycling.”

Hynes reportedly cited a series of YouTube videos, which refer to climate change as a “hoax.”

“There are two sets of scientists out there, there’s a set that says global warming is real and there’s another set that says the research is not conclusive. Everybody seems to ignore that voice and buy in to the other one,” Hynes continued. “If these guys are all right, I guess the next generation will be developing out in the Berkshires. Eastern Massachusetts will be under water, which is crazy…I’m not going to get into the science of it because there’s too much science.”

Hynes—son of retired Channel 56 newsman Jack Hynes and grandson of John Hynes, the last man to unseat an incumbent mayor of Boston (the indefatigable James Michael Curley in 1949)—said the Seaport Square development’s power generators will not be kept in the basement. That’s probably a good thing, because the city’s most gloom-and-doom estimates (whether Hynes believes them or not) predict a three-foot rise in sea-level if carbon emissions go unchecked.