Why Trump Hates Wind Energy

By Tom Ribe 

The headline caught my eye: “Trump Goes on Bizarre Tirade Against Wind Turbines.” I read the article because I care about wind energy as a key solution to our climate change crisis. What Donald thinks about renewable energy matters a great deal, not because he is informed on the issue or that he cares about it, but because so many people see him as their leader. People like Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia follow Don Trump’s lead. Moreover when he made the remarks, Don Trump was speaking to the Turning Point USA conservative youth conference in Florida. The kids in the room, no doubt will take what he says very seriously even if he  talks with the vocabulary and cadence of a twelve year old.

   These young people probably don’t know much about renewable energy so when the big man came in the room, they listened and were likely swept along with his “logic.” They are conservatives in training and here was the leader of the conservative movement on the international stage. And, this is a man who has apparent complete control over all the republicans in Congress according to what we see with the impeachment proceedings. He has a 90% approval rating among republican voters which means that when he says wind energy is evil, a large portion of the American public may come to agree with him even if they know little about wind energy. And the republicans in congress will take their cues from him and go to their town halls with his talking points.

   Of course Don Trump is the ultimate climate denier. He claims to know a great deal about climate but anyone who actually does understand the topic knows Don has virtually no understanding at all. Worse, he has no curiosity and this for a man who can snap his fingers and get the best research delivered to his desk in minutes and could call any expert in the US to his office for a conversation. He never does because he made up his mind about the subject a long time ago, based on some opinions of someone he identifies with, and thus he needn’t learn anything further.

   So what did the leader of the free world say to the young dominantly white youth conservatives? He treated wind energy as an amusing aside, something he would mention just to show how silly people who promote wind energy are. His body language and tone of voice were dismissive. He implies that wind energy is just another stupid liberal idea and with the inevitable dominance of Trump’s ideas, it will go away along with all those weak people who don’t go along with his world view, a world view formed in the 1950s.

   “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. They’re noisy. They kill the birds. You want to see a bird graveyard? Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen in your life,” said President Don Trump.

 It is true that wind systems can kill birds who get struck by the blades of the wind machines. Scientists estimate that 140,000 birds are killed per year by wind turbines and as the turbines get taller, the mortality goes up.  So bird deaths are not to be dismissed and we need to continue our efforts to find ways to protect birds from wind turbines. But is this a real issue in Trump’s mind? Does he care about wildlife really?

   If you look at the Trump administration broadly he has delegated environmental policy to oil industry careerists in people like Andrew Wheeler at the Environmental Protection Agency and David Bernhardt at the Department of the Interior. Have they worked to protect wildlife like birds? No, the driving policy of Trump’s environmental agencies is “energy dominance” which means all out with oil and gas development on public and private lands and reducing or eliminating regulations that impair oil development anywhere including the most sensitive wildlife habitat in the world. Trump’s interior swept aside regulations meant to protect that critically endangered sage grouse so more oil wells could go in and they plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the most important bird and mammal refuge in North America by far. They weakened the Endangered Species Act and punish federal employees who try to enforce it.

   Already millions of birds have been killed by Trump’s energy dominance as large areas of wild land have been laid to waste with drilling rigs, pipelines, roads, lights and spills. The methane pollution from these oil rigs is immediate and the pollution from burning their products escalates global heating that hundreds of scientists predict will lead to the extinction of a minimum of 16 percent of all species by the end of the century. This is probably a very conservative estimate.

   Trump went on in his speech to conservative youth about wind turbines:  “But they’re manufactured tremendous if you’re into this, tremendous fumes. Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint, fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether it’s in China, Germany, it’s going into the air. It’s our air, their air, everything, right?”

   Because Trump doesn’t think clearly, he doesn’t speak clearly and we are all left to wonder what he meant with this ramble. Are the “tremendous fumes” from the manufacture of wind turbines in China and Germany? Or are the fumes coming from wind turbines operating on the landscape?  Nobody will ever know what he meant and if he weren’t president there would be no reason to care. He would be right if he meant that manufacturing wind machines produces pollution. No doubt it does, just like manufacturing oil drilling equipment and oil refineries produce pollution. But oil pollutes at every stage of its industrial cycle, wind energy is completely clean beyond the turbine factory.

   If he meant that the wild turbines produce pollution when operating, that is pure nonsense that he picked up from some right wing conspiracists who view the presence of renewable energy as a front in the culture wars. Unable to think critically, the President repeats nonsense, this time in front of young people who will witness the horrors of climate change.

  Aside from dismissing wind energy as bad for the environment, Trump is also teaching them that rigorous thinking like science and research are unnecessary. One need only gather comfortable opinions and express them to those who admire you. Conservatives can run a country and a world on such tripe.

    Least we give Mr. Trump too much credit on environmental policy, let’s look at the real roots of his war on wind. Donald loves golf but unlike most golfers who join a club or go to the municipal course, Donald builds golf courses with opulent buildings and condos to make money. In Aberdeen, Scotland Mr. Trump built a golf course which by all accounts is having financial problems due to the Trump brand which is toxic in Europe. (Trump recently got caught directing US military personnel to use this resort while in transit to the Middle East, in essence using taxpayer dollars to make money from the power of his office.) In Aberdeen he also worked to get common people’s homes away from his property and ended up erecting berms of sand to block the view of the Scottish homes from his links when he could not condemn their private properties.  This was not popular with the homeowners.

   More to the point, a wind farm was proposed for the ocean right offshore of Trump’s resort and he decided it would be ugly and cost him money so he fought it in court in Scotland in 2017 and lost. According to most accounts most of the people of Scotland support renewable energy and they supported this wind farm as part of their effort to deal with the climate crisis and be free of carbon sources coming from Russia and Norway.

    Thus we get to the real roots of Trump’s dislike of wind energy. He takes it personally. As a hedonist and an extreme narcissist he took the wind farm off shore in Aberdeen personally. It is an affront to him, an attack on his business, his power as a rich real estate guy. The wind people won and he lost and he is angry about it, especially because the episode revealed the Scots do not share his world view and they will not submit to his methods of getting his way – intimidation, lawsuits, personal attacks etc.

   So when the President of the United States spews nonsense about wind energy we can understand why. We need not trouble ourselves with his specious arguments and his pretend environmentalism. We need only understand that it is all about him. Everything is all about him.