President Trump and his merry band of deregulators unveiled a stripped version of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan this week in an effort to aid the dying coal industry. The Affordable Clean Energy plan (note the central placement of the word “affordable”) will lead to more emissions and up to 1,400 deaths a year.
But the president doesn’t appear to have finished hacking away at the tenuous advancements we’ve made in the fight against climate change. Wind turbines, he tweeted out on Friday, are an “environmental and aesthetic disaster.” Huh?
Let’s unpack that, shall we?
The Audobon Society estimates that wind turbines kill somewhere between 140,000 to 328,000 birds every year in North America. That’s a lot of birds! As far as renewables go, turbines pose the biggest threat to avian creatures. Fossil fuels, however, kill far more birds — including eagles. Coal, an industry Trump vowed to save, kills the most birds at nearly 8 million per year. So while we applaud Trump’s newfound concern for eagles, he’s better off shuttering coal plants if he wants to save his winged buddies.
As for wind turbines constituting an environmental disaster? Trump must have missed this memo, but wind energy helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 2016, wind turbines generated 226 million megawatt-hours of clean energy. And the wind industry isn’t going anywhere anytime soon — the market value of wind power worldwide is expected to reach $100 billion by 2025.
This isn’t the first time Trump has gone after wind power. A couple weeks ago, the president blasted “windmills” for needing government subsidies at a fundraiser in Upstate, New York. “Who wants energy where you need a subsidy?” he asked, conveniently forgetting to mention his forthcoming plan to save the coal industry.
As for the aesthetic disaster portion of Trump’s tweet? We’ll let his art and sartorial choices speak for themselves.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After a hard week of dismantling environmental regulations, Trump starts in on renewables on Aug 24, 2018.