What’s Up With Trump’s Crazy “Windmill” Hate?
Photo by Mike Setchell
It is clear Donald Trump has no interest in encouraging dialogue, easing tensions, or de-escalating conflict. The evidence is plentiful from Greenland and NATO to Minneapolis and basic human rights for all. His “windmill” rants are another level of bombast: deranged, spiteful, and anti-science, embarrassing the United States, raising consumer energy prices, and derailing clean-energy investment in an increasingly competitive global green economy. Cui bono? Look no further than the petroleum industry, the beneficiary of a strange malice.
As the United States lays claim to the world’s largest oil reserves in Venezuela, one needs only look at the modus operandi of business imperialism to understand. The world’s greatest “prize” continues to benefit petrostates, family dictatorships, and oil companies around the globe; not so much the lives of ordinary citizens. Will Venezuela be any different, that is, if Trump and his backroom bullies can convince American oil companies to invest $100 billion in a rusted infrastructure without worrying about guarantees?
Or trust his dubious accounting. In a January 9 White House meeting with American oil executives, Trump stated Venezuela had gifted the US 30 million barrels of oil, “about 4 billion dollars,” pegging oil at $125/barrel. The real price was $62. He also stated Venezuela and the US hold 55% of global oil reserves with the US at “number one.” Venezuela is number one at 19%, the US 11%, a similarly enlarged boast [transcript]. Not that any of the oil bosses contradicted their gleeful Monty Hall host – all that was missing from the “Let’s Make A Deal” rah-rah spectacle were the costumes – although they better hope Trump is more steak than sizzle. The next day, Exxon’s CEO stated Venezuela was “uninvestable.”
Of course, Trump isn’t concerned about what others think, exemplified in his wife’s “I really don’t care, do u?” jacket worn to a detention center. There is little to gain by challenging his shambolic rhetoric or stream-of-conscience sludge, other than to call out the craziest of the crazy, but one wonders why no one dares inform him of the damage to American interests by hampering investment in renewable energy as China laps the US in solar, wind, and energy storage. The anti-green and anti-science oil policies are harming future American security.
In 2010, the US led China in solar, wind, and water. Only fifteen years later, China is trouncing the US, while Trump’s laughable claim that China has no “windmill areas” at his January oil-exec lovefest is cause for an immediate health assessment. Starting from almost nothing in 2005, China has installed over 500 gigawatts of wind power in the last two decades compared to 150 GW in the US. Although wind farms are harder to see from above than solar farms, China is the global leader in both wind and solarat almost half of all installed renewable energy. How can a US president be so misinformed or wilfully obtuse?
Twelve days later at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump spoke to world leaders in another shameless display of ignorance [transcript], plodding on about how windmills destroy land: “Instead of building ineffective money-losing windmills, we’re taking them down and not approving any,” adding that “Every time that goes around, you lose $1,000.” His abject nonsense included more bluster about the US “leading China by a lot,” nuclear power plant approval in three weeks, only stupid people buy windmills, and “Venezuela is going to make more money in the next six months than they’ve made in the last 20 years” along with outright lies about Greenland, NATO, and US investment. Why should anyone believe him if he doesn’t even get the most basic facts right?
It’s a wonder anyone lasted until the end, although European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde and others did walk out of an earlier WEF dinner speech by Howard Lutnick, the US secretary of commerce, after he repeatedly criticized Europe, stating that with Trump “capitalism has a new sheriff in town.” Which town was not explained. The event ended without dessert, called off by BlackRock CEO and WEF co-chairman Larry Fink.
The China slights may play in front of a roomful of oil executives more interested in pleasing a man who can approve prospective oil leases. Or low-wattage MAGA followers, who believe whatever their leader says, giddily repeating his shameless lies on social media. But not prime ministers and presidents charged with ensuring affordability for their constituents or energy investors. Is the world so beholden to the United States that such nonsense is repeatedly accepted? “Brand America” is being dragged through the muck.
In fact, Trump’s curmudgeon act is starting to fall flat. At the same Davos forum, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney called out the nostalgic reliance on formerly trustworthy allies, inviting “middle powers” to band together and circumvent a failing US hegemony that has existed since the end of World War Two [transcript]. The rest of the world isn’t waiting for Trump to realign the old world order according to his offhand whimsy. Trade deals, security pacts, and energy agreements are being refashioned without American say-so.
Nor is the world waiting for the US to figure out the mounting problems with petroleum, especially pollution, global warming, and energy independence. At the 2026 North Sea Summit in early February, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Iceland, Norway, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Denmark agreed to spend €1 trillion from 2031 to increase offshore wind, hydrogen production, and international grid connectors, helping Europe to cut fossil fuel imports from Russia, while strengthening energy security, efficiency, and stability. The world’s largest new-energy hub will provide clean energy to the world’s second-largest economic zone (US 25% world GDP, Europe 22%, China 17%).
German chancellor Friedrich Merz stated that North Sea countries were committed to creating an affordable and secure energy supply with a goal of 15 GW of new wind installations per year and 300 GW by 2050. Current offshore wind capacity in Europe is 37 GW (UK 45%, Germany 25%, the Netherlands 13%). Current offshore wind capacity in the United States is less than 200 MW (0.2 GW).
As Trump fudges more numbers, American investment continues to fall further behind in a fast-growing global green economy. But even at home, the facts are catching up to his fictions as another judge ruled against his wind hatred, allowing five wind projects to proceed, paused because of so-called “national security” issues, including the laughable excuse that wind turbines interrupt radar. The five Atlantic offshore wind farms will produce about 6 GW of clean energy, powering 2.5 million homes in the electricity-hungry north-east, where large populations preclude building more dirty and dangerous energy infrastructure. As noted by Turn Forward executive director Hillary Bright, “Offshore wind strengthens American energy security, supports domestic manufacturing and construction jobs, and delivers reliable power where it is needed most.” Who can oppose such obvious logic?
Trump also routinely trots out his usual blather about windmill bird deaths. At Davos, “They kill the birds; they ruin your landscapes.” At the White House oilfest, “They kill your birds; they’re all made in China,” adding that they rot in eight years into “a junkyard of steel.” In fact, today’s wind turbines have an estimated lifetime of 25 years. In 2025, China manufactured about two-thirds of all wind turbines (WTs), followed by Europe and the United States. Lower-rated turbines can also be replaced via “returbining,” for example, swapping out an older 3-MW WT for an 8-MW WT, making green uptake even more profitable while lowering the visible footprint.
As for bird deaths, almost 4 billion are killed by cats each year in the US, 1 billion from building crashes, 175 million from power lines, 7 million from flying into communications towers, and up to 1 million from oil and gas fluid waste pits, compared to an estimated 330,000 by wind farms, less than 0.01% of a total 5 billion estimated annual bird deaths. Even in New York City, a record number of bird deaths were recorded last year from building strikes.
Dr. Dustin Partridge, director of conservation and science at NYC Bird Alliance, who along with 150 volunteers collects injured birds and tries to nurse them back to health, stated, “There are easy solutions to reducing bird collisions with buildings, and all New Yorkers can help.” Perhaps Trump can instruct all non-essential lights to be turned off at night in Trump Tower, especially during spring and fall migrations, and insure that decals are applied to the windows to break up reflections.
Progress always comes with opposition, all the more the heftier the financial backing. Located south of Cape Cod between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island, Cape Wind, a proposed 470-MW array of turbines, was dogged by numerous legal challenges, led by wealthy residents who live or lived nearby, such as the Kennedy family, Walter Cronkite, John Kerry, and oil billionaire Bill Koch. The US senator from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander, who built a vacation home on Nantucket Island, also complained about the proposed size, flashing red lights, and spoiled vistas, declaring that “the windmills we are talking about today are not our grandmother’s windmills.” The lease rights were terminated.
Nimbyism comes at a huge price, such as Trump trying to control other countries’ oil and threatening them with military invasion, rather than supporting a home-grown clean-energy market. One expects a billionaire businessman to feel entitled when it comes to protecting his own business, but not politicians representing more than their own family interests. Is it ignorance, misinformation, lobbying for the competition, negligence, or plain old daily drama that continues to undermine trust? Or all of the above?
Children’s literature may offer the best explanation. In Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 The Emperor’s New Clothes, a child finally stands up to the fiction masquerading as fact after the emperor parades in front of the whole town without a stitch of clothing to announce, “He’s got nothing on.” Is the empire as naked as the emperor? Or The Pied Piper of Hamelin, a fourteenth-century tale of retribution, where the piper – angered at not being paid for ridding the town of a rat infestation – leads more than one hundred children to their deaths as they blindly follow behind him into the Weser River.
Closer to home, conman Harold Hill hoodwinked the citizens of River City, Iowa, even the sheriff, in Meredith Wilson’s 1957 hit Broadway production The Music Man. Although Hill eventually wins over the town and heart of librarian Marian, happy endings are not guaranteed in today’s interconnected global village. Old wisdom may be best as in Aesop’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf, where everyone calls out the brazen shepherd boy’s repeated cries of doom, knowing they are lies intended to draw attention to himself and distract from his failures. Are we there yet? Is the cesspool deep enough?
As Trump prefers oil and the past to renewables and the future, China continues to grow and has already surpassed the United States in renewable technology. China may even become the first “electrostate,” leap-frogging an unsustainable, unsafe, and dirty petroleum era that dominated the twentieth century. China has more than five time the solar power (900 GW) as the United States and 3.5 times times the wind power (500 GW). No amount of American bellyaching will stop the progress.
The 2000s “China shock” is now a China storm, causing more American job losses in manufacturing amid a growing trade imbalance. But Trump would rather natter on about failed ideologies and presumed unfair practices than meet the new challenges with constructive energy policies to secure a sustainable supply chain and grow American manufacturing.
We are all trying to predict the future from the past to help manage our lives, if only to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Indeed, business thrives on prediction in a stable environment. But one shouldn’t have to fact-check a US president who opposes all changes to his small-tent world. The American experiment is broken if a president can lie with impunity about the most basic truths, while those who know better stay silent.
Certainly Trump’s infantilism is harming future energy investment in the US, while his anti-science, anti-education, and anti-community agenda destroys confidence in American know-how. Perhaps that’s the point of all the craziness. Best climb aboard and join the future instead of prattling on about a failed industrial past, empowered by the dark forces of destruction. Anti-science is anti-progress.
Green power is about people power, community sharing, and cooperative living. Everyone supports a clean future that reduces energy bills, doesn’t damage the environment, and reduces conflict around the world. Everyone who isn’t lost in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment