Donald Trump’s gut bias towards erasing wind farms easily won whatever debate may have played out, if any, in the nation’s energy future.
In a single stroke, Trump on Monday walked away from five huge wind farm projects along the East Coast – and with it, once again struck a blow for a fossil-fueled based future. The move leaves two large already operational ocean wind farms, but leaves construction and energy workers jobless, strikes against climate change policies, and abandons the Eastern coastal areas without access to an alternative source of power.
Not insignificantly, the projects that Trump tossed already have eating up $25 billion towards machinery to capture the wind and sources power more than 2.5 million homes and businesses.
In Trump’s view, the ugly, costly and inefficient. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum added that they create noise that can interfere with military radar, and labeled these wind projects a national security risk that never arose in earlier reviews, including by the Defense Department.
By contrast, Burgum and Trump were silent about the rising demands for electricity from burgeoning AI data centers, cyber currency businesses and consumer use of more electronic products in everyday life.
The New York Times reminded us that Trump has disparaged the clean energy source ever since he failed 14 years ago to stop an offshore wind farm visible from of one of his golf courses in Scotland.
It’s never made sense. If we need that much more electricity, why t not get it from all sources, not just oil and gas? Of course, those industries handsomely reward Trump, but somebody in these stories has to be able to add up the demands and compare them with the available resources.
Trump’s personal obsessions are setting climate change back years with a move that neither increases electricity sources or deals with rising prices. It is unclear what problem Trump has solved – other than scratching his personal itch to overturn anything Joe Biden did and assert that climate change is a hoax..
The Order
Specifically, Trump withdrew approval for the federal leases that were signed by the Biden administration – once again leaving open the questions of law, contracts, government commitments and related state and federal legalisms.
From the cheap seats, it appeared that this was another foregone Trump conclusion for which Cabinet members went searching for justification. The wind farms are off New York, Rhode Island and Virginia – now all with Democratic governors. Trump did not move to shut down wind farms when Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, was still governor.
Some of the projects already were in serious financial trouble after an earlier Trump order to halt work for this review. Most were supported by their states. That halt order itself was overturned in the courts.
Wind and solar energy projects had been among the fastest growing job categories in the country. With jobless figures rising, one might have thought that Trump would think again about the impact of stopping these projects. But then he could have stopped future projects without affecting those already underway.
We have a growing list of unneeded projects that Trump wants and on which he spends our money or private donations from the wealthy circle he then is allowing to dictate policy. Those include building renames, a new gilded ballroom taking over the White House campus, an out-of-control deportation program and an uncomprehensive foreign policy. The list of projects that American voters say they need – from health care and housing to business stability and everyday spending sanity — go unaddressed.
Why do his supporters think Trump is a great politician?
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