The Republican presidential candidate continues to prove himself too uninformed to be President of these United States.
In his latest attack on the facts, Republican hopeful Donald Trump went on a rant against renewable energy. As is so typical for the shallow conservative, he seized the handiest and easiest idea to sell his argument.
In essence, Donald Trump says that we can’t have wind power because it kills all the birds.
All the birds. Killed by wind turbines.
Trump was particularly worried about the fate of the eagles. Of course he was. The eagle, the symbol of America. The easiest way to tug on the heartstrings on the uninformed is to threaten the very symbol of our nation. So he did. He claimed that “thousands” of eagles are killed in California by wind energy.
Trump appeared on a radio show the other day with Republican has-been Herman Cain. He said:
“[Wind power] kills all the birds. Thousands of birds are lying on the ground. And the eagle. You know, certain parts of California — they’ve killed so many eagles. You know, they put you in jail if you kill an eagle. And yet these windmills [kill] them by the hundreds.”
What an image! Hundreds of dead American eagles, all slaughtered by wind turbines.
And in keeping with the unapologetic shallowness of his position, Trump went on to complain that wind turbines are unattractive. There is no insult in Trump world more powerful than “ugly”.
Here are Donald Trump's views on wind power, and Disneyland: https://t.co/mphn1qSbGU pic.twitter.com/ja1j6wltBx
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 26, 2016
So wind energy is ugly, inefficient and it kills all of those wonderful noble eagles.
Except that NONE of that is true. None of it.
Here is the truth, not that it will matter to the fact averse Donald Trump.
While it is true that many birds are killed by wind turbines (up to 368,000 annually), that figure looks low when compared to the number of birds killed by cell towers each year (6.8 million).
The biggest killer of birds is….are you ready? Cats. Cats kill up to 3.7 billion birds a year.
As for those eagles? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that two eagles were killed by wind turbines in Palm Springs since 1997.
Trump’s rant seems even more deceitful when we consider the fact that climate change is the greatest threat to birds in the world. The Audubon Society says that up to half of the bird species on earth are threatened by rising global temperatures.
Donald Trump appears to be incapable of understanding or accepting reality. He says that climate change is a hoax created by China. He claims that wind turbines are killing “all the birds.” He mourns the loss of hundreds of eagles who haven’t died.
Whatever it is that he wants to be true is what he believes to be true.
He is delusional. He is dangerous. He has to be stopped.
Featured image by RichardGHawley via Flickr. Available through Creative Commons Attribution No-Derivs Generic license 2.0
