We know President Trump doesn’t like wind power. This week he stepped up his attacks against the renewable energy source, claiming wind turbines decrease property values, and the noise from the structures cause cancer.
“If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value. And they say the noise causes cancer,” the president claimed at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual spring dinner, offering no evidence to support his assertion.
President Trump also said wind turbines are a “graveyard for birds,” and, “if you love birds, you never want to walk under a windmill, because it’s a sad, sad sight.”
What’s sad is that he’s lying. Wind turbine noise does not cause cancer.
“The American Cancer Society is unaware of any credible evidence linking the noise from windmills to cancer,” a spokeswoman for ACS told the New York Times.
It’s been proven that bird deaths from clean, renewable energy like wind, are relatively small. In fact, “The number of birds that die from other causes, including fossil and nuclear energy sources, is vastly larger,” according to a report titled, The Avian and Wildlife Costs of Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power.
And let’s not forget those tall, glassy buildings—of the sort that are plastered with Trump’s name on them. These buildings, in many of our biggest cities, are a much more deadly obstacle course for birds. As Audubon notes, “Hundreds of millions of birds are killed annually by collisions with buildings.”
Bird deaths of any size matter. We care about them. But wind power critics like President Trump are using bird-brained rhetoric to deflect the fact that filthy, polluting fossil-fuels are much more poisonous to the health of our families, as well as our bird friends.