Donald Trump really, really hates windmills, as he’s made clear over the years.
As an article last year by McGill University’s Office For Science and Society detailed, hatred of wind turbines (which he frequently mis-describes as “windmills”) are a longtime hobbyhorse of the once and future president. Trump, in rallies and elsewhere, has denounced wind power as “windmills that destroy everything, the most expensive energy there is, they ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.” He has even vowed to ban the construction of such edifices.
Per the McGill piece, it appears Trump’s hatred of wind turbines dates back to 2006 when he purchased land for a golf course in Scotland and discovered that a wind farm was planned nearby. This led to a long-running legal dispute with the Scottish government, in which Trump not only lost but was made to pay the legal fees of the government.
This week, less than three weeks before he returns to the White House, Trump attacked wind turbines once again, also referring to the U.K.’s policies in the matter. “The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills!,” he said on Truth Social.
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It’s a reference to a fairly obscure dispute going on in the U.K., with the government recently levying something called the Energy Profits Levy (EPL), a windfall profits tax directed at oil and gas profits. As a result, the American energy company Apache has announced that it will cease drilling in the North Sea, although not until 2029.
Also on Truth Social, overnight, Trump once again endorsed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s bid to remain in his position, shared a Fox News article about the fate of TikTok, shared a poll revealing that a majority of followers of the Joe Rogan Podcast’s X account support Trump, and shared a Fox News story about Trump’s most notable movie cameos.
However, even with Trump returning to the White House, wind power is far from dead in the United States. Equinor announced this week that it had “secured $3 billion in financing to build Empire Wind, an offshore wind project off the coast of New York that could power 500,000 homes,” per E&E News, even though Trump has vowed to cancel wind power projects.
“save the whales” went from canonical hippie-punching shibboleth to right-wing culture war principle bc it’s maybe wind turbines that are killing them now. at some point US politics is just too stupid to pay attention to at all. https://t.co/4eYLATZuRE pic.twitter.com/4B5P7F8xIs
— Sam Adler-Bell (@SamAdlerBell) September 26, 2023
The McGill story noted that it’s unclear what can happen if wind turbines are taken down.
“What do you do with the decommissioned turbines? Since the blades can be 100 metres long, burying in a landfill is not a viable long-term option. Made of polyester or epoxy resins reinforced with glass or carbon fibres, the blades are difficult but not impossible to recycle in some way. They can be ground into small particles to replace sand and clay in cement or cut up and used in construction to reinforce concrete. Blades can even be converted into poles for power lines. Ideally, the blades would be chemically broken down to extract the resins used that could then be used to make new blades, a challenge that several companies are addressing.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
