To hear him talk, you’d think Energy Secretary Wright cares about Electricity prices. You would be wrong.
To hear them talk, you’d think that Republicans care about birds. You would be wrong.
During a recent visit to his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland—and seated beside U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer—the president launched into a rant about how windmills are “a disaster” that “kill all your birds.” And he’s got his administration on the case. “Wind projects are known to kill eagles,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tweeted last week, instructing his department to enforce the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act to protect the nationally symbolic birds of prey from windmills. Burgum also said he was ending “preferential treatment” for wind energy and announced an investigation into how turbines “might affect migratory bird populations.” He even halted offshore wind leasing and began canceling other wind projects.
Securities laws make lying on these statements a criminal offense – so this is the closest thing available to getting a major corporation under oath. Solar and wind are lowest cost producers.
This concern for the birds is certainly not based in a sincere commitment to conservation. As with most of Trump’s deeply held views, it’s at least partly rooted in a personal vendetta—not to mention detached from reality and undermined by his very own policies.
Trump has resented wind turbines since at least 2012, after learning of plans to build a wind farm near his golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland. His reasoning wasn’t entirely coherent. “They’re horrible looking structures,” he said in 2012. “They make noise, they kill birds by the thousands, they’re really destructive and I don’t care who the environmentalist is.” He sued to prevent the farm, lost, and has been seething and ranting about it ever since. (The wind farm was completed in 2018.)
He’s still sore about it. During his recent press conference with Starmer, Trump whined, “Look, wind is the most expensive form of energy. And it destroys the beauty of your fields and your plains and your waterways. Look out there, there’s no windmills. But if you look in another direction, you see windmills. When we go to Aberdeen, you’ll see some of the ugliest windmills you’ve ever seen.”
But he also gave the game away, adding, “And you can take a thousand times more energy out of a hole in the ground this big.” He spread his arms out—“This big. It’s called oil and gas. And you have it there, the North Sea, this big, that nobody would even see.” After all, Trump also shares with many other Republicans a hardcore, nihilistic commitment to fossil fuels, no matter the consequences (a commitment that is supported by millions in campaign donations).
So Trump is no ally to birds, except perhaps the tiny number who are harmed by wind turbines near his properties. But it’s worse than that: His policies are actually anti-bird.
Just four months ago, he called for gutting the very law that Burgum says he’ll enforce against windmills—the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which brought our national bird back from extinction—because he views it as burdensome to fossil fuel companies. Trump is also eviscerating protections for those particular birds, and many others, in at least two other ways, as The New York Times reported: weakening the Endangered Species Act by excluding habitat from the act’s protection, and diluting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 by ceasing to penalize companies for accidentally killing birds.
But he also gave the game away, adding, “And you can take a thousand times more energy out of a hole in the ground this big.” He spread his arms out—“This big. It’s called oil and gas. And you have it there, the North Sea, this big, that nobody would even see.” After all, Trump also shares with many other Republicans a hardcore, nihilistic commitment to fossil fuels, no matter the consequences (a commitment that is supported by millions in campaign donations).
So Trump is no ally to birds, except perhaps the tiny number who are harmed by wind turbines near his properties. But it’s worse than that: His policies are actually anti-bird.
Just four months ago, he called for gutting the very law that Burgum says he’ll enforce against windmills—the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which brought our national bird back from extinction—because he views it as burdensome to fossil fuel companies. Trump is also eviscerating protections for those particular birds, and many others, in at least two other ways, as The New York Times reported: weakening the Endangered Species Act by excluding habitat from the act’s protection, and diluting the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 by ceasing to penalize companies for accidentally killing birds.
Peter,
I am a long time fan. I focus on climate communications and the use of language. One of the things I enjoy about your posts is the solid facts and reasons around the topics you discuss. They provide a good foundation for understanding. But here’s the “but.”
I worry about those that read your posts and believe that facts and reasons will change people’s minds. There’s a lot of psychological research out there that says that facts and reasons are used to justify decisions already made rather than to actually persuade.
I also believe that we feed what we fight. i.e. I’ve seen enough “Windmills cause cancer” quotes by people trying to debunk Trump. When we say “Wind turbines do NOT cause cancer,” our brains do not hear the negative. What we hear subconsciously is “wind turbines” and “cancer.” In addition, even when we debunk there is a persistency bias that most humans have. We know that “wind turbines” don’t cause cancer, but even after we debunk there’s a small voice saying, “well, maybe we don’t know everything about wind turbines.”
Rather, direct statements about wind have a bigger impact on the public. For example, “Wind turbines are the lowest cost form of energy.” Wind turbines are our “new cash crop,” The Dakota’s are the Saudi Arabia of wind.”
I don’t know how you want to draw the line between providing information and having people communicate about that information. Facts and reasons are important, but they haven’t worked for over 30 years at getting people to act on climate change and clean energy by themselves.
Thanks for all you do. Thoughts?
-Hobie
PS: A couple of my post on more detail:
What flaw does the climate and the anti-Trump movement share in common?
https://skywaterearthhobie1.substack.com/p/what-flaw-does-the-climate-and-the
Correcting Two Mistakes with the Left’s Political Communications
https://skywaterearthhobie1.substack.com/p/correcting-two-mistakes-with-the
Yes, George Lakoff has written extensively about it—his little book Don’t Think of an Elephant, for example, talks about the persistence of frames in the mind, and how once a frame is formed everything is fit into it regardless of reality.
We need to talk about the damage caused by fossil and fissile fuels—health, ecological, social, political, psychological… and make the advantages and necessity of renewables clear, but we also need to debunk the lies that have been spread for decades by the fossil-fueled far right. And we need to explain the motivations and mechanisms of the lies, show the billions of dollars they’ve spent lying and manipulating, funneling the money through PR and lobbying firms pretending to be think tanks. All 3 parts have to be repeated constantly.
Conversely, it’s good that Peter puts “Trump” and “psychotic” in the same title.
😉
It seems just possible that the tens of billions of dollars spent on lies by fossil fuel, ICEV, rail, agro-chemical, media, banking, and other industries and far right dark money mbillionaire donors, funneled through politicians and a huge jackalpack of PR and lobbying firms masquerading as think tanks, all messaging in lockstep with central coordination by professional liars, focus-group testing, and professional troll farm dissemination of their made-up lies have had something to do with the failure of vastly outspent education programs done by volunteers and 20-something under-minimum wage workers.
Rather than indulging in the same old circular-firing-squad scapegoating and dissatisfaction with, gosh—telling the truth—maybe we should blame the ones trying to end the world by lying and manipulation, and consider making them stop. Meanwhile we can organize to equalize, so the 80-99% in favor of sane action can finally outspend the 10% of the 1% who are mbillionaire psychopaths.
Agree 100%, I read an article earlier today on Trump’s visit to Scotland, where he was degrading “windmills” and associating with the deaths of eagles. The association sticks, even though turbines are not in reality a major cause of bird death, but the seeds have already been sown/spread, by none other than the president of the U.S.A, in peoples minds. The rest of us need to sow/spread the whole truth, which we hope will sink in, over the malicious obfuscation of facts.
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In a few years, the American bald eagle will be seen only on coins and the coat of arms of the United States unless drastic action is taken to save these birds.”
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/new-challenges-put-bald-eagle-recovery-peril