We interrupt our regular scoffing to bring you this important message from the President of the United States of America: (He’s the one on the left, I think, but it doesn’t much matter, there’s so little difference between them.)

I never understood wind. I know windmills very much, I have studied it better than anybody. I know it is very expensive. They are made in China and Germany mostly, very few made here, almost none, but they are manufactured, tremendous — if you are into this — tremendous fumes and 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 is China or Germany, is going into the air.

A windmill will kill many bald eagles. After a certain number, they make you turn the windmill off, that is true. By the way, they make you turn it off. And yet, if you killed one, they put you in jail. That is OK. But why is it OK for windmills to destroy the bird population?

— Donald Trump (Speech given for Turning Point USA, December, 2019)

1. 1. Most windmills are not from China or Germany, but rather from Denmark.
   2. About 50% of windmills installed in the U.S. are manufactured in the U.S. But Denmark, rather than the U.S., remains the world leader, thanks to Reagan’s cutting of clean-energy funding back in the day. Still, over 500 U.S. factories build wind-related parts and materials in 43 states, accounting for 25,000 manufacturing jobs in 2016. Overall, 100,000 wind-power related jobs exist across all 50 states.
   3. The carbon footprint involved in the manufacture of a wind-mill is paid back after 6 months in service. After that, it produces zero emissions as it replaces the burning of fossil fuels. By my calculations the current number of windmills running in the U.S. are keeping 45,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere every hour!
   4. Windmills account for only .01% of human-caused bird deaths. With Trump’s towers probably taking a greater toll. Even the Audubon Society is in favor of windmills: “Audubon strongly supports properly sited wind power as a renewable energy source that helps reduce the threats posed to birds and people by climate change.”
      When it comes to birds, fossil-fueled facilities account for 700 times more deaths, and are about 17 times more deadly than wind power per gigawatt hour of electricity produced .
   5. No one has ever been made to shut down a windmill for having killed a certain number of eagles, nor is there any law to that effect. But if a migrating flock of birds is spotted, the windmill, of course, can be shut down temporarily.
      New wind-farms are sited outside of migratory paths, to lessen such occurrences.

 

You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe.

“I never understood wind,” is where he should’ve stopped his speech; it says it all.

We need world leaders who do understand wind, and who at least understand basic science. We need people who are capable of comprehending that wind and solar energy are absolutely necessary to the continuance of life on this planet, because burning fossil fuels is killing us. What we absolutely don’t need and cannot endure are politicians who are so transparently in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry.

“They say the noise [from windmills] causes cancer.”

— PolitiFact