When the President of the United States speaks, people assume he knows what he’s talking about. After all, the President has access to top experts in any field. So, when he tells the entire world at the UN General Assembly on September 22 that wind power doesn’t work and China isn’t using it but is foisting wind turbines on everyone else in some sort of scam, people are expected to believe him. The problem is, these statements are obviously not true, even to people who know little about energy.
Trump has built his energy policy around the oil industry and while this is common for American politicians, in his case he goes farther. Not only does he say that America and the world must return to full dependence on coal and oil, including natural gas, he is discouraging wind and solar and actively sabotaging those energy sources by ending tax breaks, denying permits and in some cases shutting down project already funded and near completion.
This seems like the policy of people who are out of touch. With energy demand rapidly increasing for data centers, we would hope for an “all of the above” energy policy. Instead we get a culture war, ideological policy from people who seem stuck in the past.
When I was a teaching assistant at the University of California, a student challenged one of my statements in a class. I had to admit I had it wrong. I confronted the reality that if one statement was wrong, the students now wondered what else was wrong that I said. I had blown my credibility, and I could see the skepticism in some of their faces.
Trump doesn’t understand this credibility issue. Perhaps he feels the power of his personality and his fame will always keep people in rapt awe like his fans are when he has a rally. When he drones on and on with his most serious voice at the UN General Assembly, or the gathering of generals in Virginia, he assumes people are with him. Are they? He was allotted 15 minutes at the UN, yet he talked for an hour. They were waiting for the next speaker, and they are waiting for the United States to give them a responsible president to help them deal with a world in crisis.
Trump talked about his favorite topics including renewable energy. He told those gathered that their nations would “fail” if they continued to build solar and wind facilities and neglected mining and burning petroleum and coal. He said that wind and solar are “too expensive” and “don’t work.” These are simple minded and unsophisticated claims from a man who could access global statistics and energy expertise. Did he really imagine world leaders would agree and shut down their renewable energy and return to expensive polluting energy sources with all the international politics that goes along with oil dependence? Does he imagine that other leaders are climate change deniers or just don’t care?
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, solar is now 41% cheaper than petroleum powered electricity and wind generation is 53% cheaper than natural gas or oil generated electricity. Business has turned toward low-cost energy with their bottom line in mind.
But the actual cost of construction and operation of various electrical generating plants is only part of the costs. Because burning petroleum generates greenhouse gases, it worsens global warming, and we now see the costs of climate change worldwide with floods, forest fires, sea level rise, heat waves, intensifying storms, and permafrost melting. These secondary or external costs are real.
Trump is a known narcissist. He holds grudges and takes policy matters personally. When someone disagrees with him, he seeks revenge, and he doesn’t forget and move on. His loathing for wind energy started in 2012 when a company built 11 wind turbines just offshore from his Aberdeenshire golf course. Rather than seeing the turbines as critical to saving humanity from its own pollution, he was personally offended that they were in his view, and he railed to the Scottish government about them to no avail. His hatred of the wind industry germinated inside him and now it has become the policy of the United States Government because of his compliant staff.
The wind farm Trump objected to in Scotland provides electricity to 80,000 homes and is among the most technologically advanced in the world. Anyone can understand that big wind turbines disrupt an otherwise tranquil seascape, but we can also understand that we are an energy hungry society, and we must generate electricity cleanly.
Oil wells and coal mines are ugly too. So are smokestacks spewing soot and CO2 from those coal fired powerplants that the private sector closed and Trump insisted be restarted with federal subsides. They are not right next to a Trump golf course. If they were suddenly put there, we can imagine he might react similarly to how he reacted to the wind turbines. Of course, coming down on oil or coal would put him in direct conflict with major republican doners, the carbon industry. (The oil industry gives plenty of money to democrats also.)
Those delegates to the UN may know that, in fact, that wind energy works very well indeed and the private sector is investing heavily in it worldwide. In 2023, there was a 50% increase in wind installations over 2022 and that level of new wind farms is probably continuing everywhere except the United States where the Trump regime is doing all it can to thwart wind energy on private and public lands and waters.
Even so, to meet our international obligations under the Paris Accord or under the agreements made at COP28, we need to triple the level of renewable energy installations worldwide. Fortunately wind and solar are by far the cheapest sources of electricity so they should continue to see growth, even in the US despite Trump.
Hearing Trump say ignorant, frankly silly things to the UN about wind power embarrasses the United States. When he said that China doesn’t use wind but foists it on other countries, everyone knew he was lying. In fact, China leads all other countries in new wind installations, far outpacing its closest rival, the US. But with Trump discouraging wind power in the US, China will become the leader in new wind technology.
This sort of interference with the energy markets that Trump and his employees feel is ideologically necessary, will set our industries back for years and hurt the climate and employment in the US. The Trump fantasy world that climate change is “woke” or a “green scam” as he and his Energy Secretary say, is not real. These guys think they can change markets or convince most Americans who know climate change is real toward their ideology. It won’t work and they only damage their own credibility and damage our economy in the process.
