Okay, so he can’t tell the difference between a windmill and a wind turbine. But when you’re talking about someone who doesn’t know an excursion from an incursion, or reality from delusion, the correct name of a power source hardly seems significant.

What does matter, though, is Donald Trump’s obsession with the cockamamie idea that “windmills” — i.e., wind turbines — are dangerous, disruptive, ugly, and unjustifiably expensive.

Of course, he also believes that you can cure COVID with the anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine . . . but that’s a whole other can of worms.

The earliest windmills were designed by Persians (modern-day Iran and Afghanistan) between the 8th and 10th centuries; improved upon in Northwestern Europe in the 12th century; and made their way to America around 1854, when a machinist named Daniel Halladay patented the first commercially viable, self-governing windmill capable of adjusting to changing wind speeds and directions. For centuries, in a virtually pollution-free world, they were an incomparable boon to farmers, ranchers and others who depended upon the water they pumped for agricultural and domestic use.

As technology advanced in the 20th century, windmills began to generate electricity. But it wasn’t until the 1970s, when it became obvious that oil and gas prices would only continue to rise, that many countries began developing more efficient wind turbines. By 2012, there were over 45,000 wind turbines active throughout the world, with more being added each year.

But Donald Trump doesn’t like them. He and his billionaire friends are oil-and-gas devotees, heavily invested in non-renewable fossil fuels; and wind turbines are their natural enemy. But he can’t just say that, so he has come up with a list of objections that he tries to sell as facts. Let’s take them one at a time.

CLAIM: They’re unsightly and noisy. He says they ruin the beauty of the natural landscape and are “incredibly noisy,” referring to wind farms as looking like a “junkyard of steel.”

FACT: One of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen from the air was the offshore wind farm abutting the magnificent Oresund Bridge that connects Copenhagen, Denmark, and Malmo, Sweden, as my flight approached the Copenhagen Airport. To me, they resembled gigantic seabirds: graceful, still, wings fluttering gently as they rested on the water’s surface between flights. While beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, these hardly qualify to any reasonable person as “junkyards of steel.” Even their soft, “whooshing” sound is barely audible above the human and mechanical ambient noise of everyday life.

And compared to a coal- or gas-fired power plant . . . Well, you decide which you’d rather have in your back yard.

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CLAIM: Bird Fatalities. He asserts that wind turbines kill huge numbers of birds, and calls the areas underneath them “bird graveyards.”

FACT: Yes, birds do sometimes fly into them — just as they do into glass window panes and airplane engines. But estimated bird deaths caused by wind turbines in the U.S. total less than 0.01% of bird deaths from other man-made causes. Also, new technologies are addressing the issue and minimizing even that small number.

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CLAIM: Economic Cost. He says wind energy is the “most expensive energy ever conceived,” and that the industry only survives because of massive government subsidies.

FACT: While wind turbines are expensive to construct, their maintenance requirements are minimal, and fuel is free. It’s air. The cost of their operation averages between $30 and $86 per megawatt hour (MWh), compared to $48 to $109 per MWh for new natural gas, and $71 to $173 for new coal. Again, Trump’s imagination runs amok.

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CLAIM: Foreign Manufacturing. He has often alleged that most wind turbines are built in China, and that China itself barely uses any wind power.

FACT: Well, he’s half right on this one. Yes, China is the world leader in the manufacture of wind turbines. But, contrary to Trump’s allegations, they also operate more wind capacity and install more wind turbines annually in their own country than the rest of the world combined. Methinks I sense a bit of turbine envy in the Oval Office.

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CLAIM: Health and Environment. Among other bizarre claims, he says that the noise from wind turbines causes cancer, and that offshore wind farms are “driving the whales crazy.”

FACT: Another falsehood. While construction of the turbines will temporarily disturb the whales’ natural environment, there is no credible evidence to support claims that they are being harmed. And as for cancer . . . How? I mean, it’s just air. If the air itself is polluted, don’t blame the turbines; we humans are responsible for every bit of the crap that’s been floating around out there for decades.

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It’s impossible to know where Trump gets his “facts” on any subject, other than from Fox “News” and his appointed “experts” (Bobby Kennedy, Jr. comes immediately to mind). But once he fixates on a subject, he never detaches from it.

Or perhaps this is just a campaign to justify his promotion of more fossil-fuel usage for the benefit of the big oil and gas industries. And let’s not forget all of those new AI data centers popping up like dandelions.

Either way, if he succeeds in decimating the wind turbine industry in the United States, not only will he have done irreparable harm to our environment; he will also have handed Xi Jinping another big, beautiful addition to China’s growing list of superior technological achievements.

I suppose congratulations are in order . . . but not to Donald Trump.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
5/23/26