> President Donald Trump has made sweeping strides to prioritize fossil fuels and hinder renewable energy projects. Trump recently called wind and solar power “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!” in a social media post and vowed not to approve wind or “farmer destroying Solar” projects. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” he wrote on his Truth Social site this week.
It's the 2nd installment of the years of stupidity so technically that is a little bit right. That 'scam of the century' is powering a good chunk of the USA grid but never mind the details.
"Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, 'Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.
'What giants?' asked Sancho Panza.
'Those you see over there,' replied his master, 'with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.'
'Take care, sir,' cried Sancho. 'Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.'"
Don't get too exited. This is a fight that's been happening for over 20yr now. Whoever is throwing the political football of any given wind project or who is receiving it in the end zone is just a name. They'll be gone in a few years. The institution of fighting over off shore wind farms in the Boston to NYC area was there before them and will be there after them.
Regardless of the pretext of any given action the the way things generally are is that the people who have a view they want to protect, the tourism industry and the hippie/nature/biology types are on the no-wind side and the climate types, green energy people, domestic energy and big business types are on the other. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes another side wins. But nobody ever gets a win streak long enough to bring anything to fruition.
The area is well suited to wind power but the area but it's also chock full of rich people and moneyed interests that can afford to fight it, likely to the long term detriment of the region, but like locusts they will be gone and cashed out by then so they don't care. That's probably when these things will finally get built.
I'd love to see some wind turbines go up but I'll believe it when I see it. And even then, I bet they'll find some way to make everyone's bill go up instead of down because of it.
A youtube channel i follow made an interesting point. All these wind farms are covered by the jones act. So the associated ships to biuld them must be american (biult, crewed and flagged). It was hoped that this would revitalize US shipyards. But ship construction is so risk-adverse that no matter what a court says, everything is going to be put on hold for at least a few years.
The argument I've seen on Mastodon that seems to make sense to me, is that the US Dollar is the currency used in oil trading. That brings a lot of foreign currency to the USA, because people need to buy dollars to buy their oil. If the world moves away from oil, then the US economy will stop benefitting from this trade.
Of course, if the rest of the world moves to renewables, which it is, and just the USA remains reliant on oil then that also destroys this benefit. But the USA refusing to help implement renewable energy will definitely slow it down.
It's the only rational argument I can see for this policy. Of course there's the irrational to consider ("real men burn stuff" as Cory Doctorow puts it), and that may be the more important consideration.
> Work on the nearly completed Revolution Wind project for Rhode Island and Connecticut has been paused since Aug. 22 when the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued a stop-work order for what it said were national security concerns. The Interior Department agency did not specify those concerns at the time. Both the developer and the two states sued in federal courts.
The NIMBY argument is often one of aesthetics: windmills on the horizon will look ugly.
I want to see a barge with one of these windmills anchored off the coast at the proposed install spot. So people can actually see what one would look like in real life.
I know it's not representative of the array of windmills the projects seek to install, but it something.
Also, I wonder if the same people who object to the windmills ever raise objections to the boats with giant LED advertisement screens that creep past the beach close enough to shore that you can smell their engine exhaust.
15 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 49.3 ms ] thread> President Donald Trump has made sweeping strides to prioritize fossil fuels and hinder renewable energy projects. Trump recently called wind and solar power “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!” in a social media post and vowed not to approve wind or “farmer destroying Solar” projects. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” he wrote on his Truth Social site this week.
(I also think it's incredibly shortsighted)
'What giants?' asked Sancho Panza.
'Those you see over there,' replied his master, 'with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.'
'Take care, sir,' cried Sancho. 'Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn the millstone.'"
Regardless of the pretext of any given action the the way things generally are is that the people who have a view they want to protect, the tourism industry and the hippie/nature/biology types are on the no-wind side and the climate types, green energy people, domestic energy and big business types are on the other. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes another side wins. But nobody ever gets a win streak long enough to bring anything to fruition.
The area is well suited to wind power but the area but it's also chock full of rich people and moneyed interests that can afford to fight it, likely to the long term detriment of the region, but like locusts they will be gone and cashed out by then so they don't care. That's probably when these things will finally get built.
I'd love to see some wind turbines go up but I'll believe it when I see it. And even then, I bet they'll find some way to make everyone's bill go up instead of down because of it.
Sincerely and with the utmost disrespect,
A cape wind proponent.
https://youtu.be/9ISZuW1JKkI
Of course, if the rest of the world moves to renewables, which it is, and just the USA remains reliant on oil then that also destroys this benefit. But the USA refusing to help implement renewable energy will definitely slow it down.
It's the only rational argument I can see for this policy. Of course there's the irrational to consider ("real men burn stuff" as Cory Doctorow puts it), and that may be the more important consideration.
This administration is beyond stupid.
I want to see a barge with one of these windmills anchored off the coast at the proposed install spot. So people can actually see what one would look like in real life.
I know it's not representative of the array of windmills the projects seek to install, but it something.
Also, I wonder if the same people who object to the windmills ever raise objections to the boats with giant LED advertisement screens that creep past the beach close enough to shore that you can smell their engine exhaust.