- calendar_today August 17, 2025
Republican former US president Donald Trump may have been holding a press conference on a European Union trade deal, but, as he is wont to do, he couldn’t help himself. The former leader of the free world declared wind turbines to be a “con job”, claimed they turn whales “loco”, and then again that they cause the deaths of birds and humans.
The billionaire businessman’s trademark bombast often comes in the form of such memorable soundbites, distracting attention away from the substance. On wind, it’s the content that is worthy of analysis. Trump is far from the first world leader to invoke baseless claims that wind turbines are harmful, and he is not the only one to do so with gleeful relish.
Wind turbines as a “con job” and whale killer
Trump is particularly fond of calling wind turbines “windmills”, an apparently harmless misnomer that has become something of a meme among climate deniers. The connection dates back to a moral panic in the late 1800s about telephones “communicating diseases”. In both cases, these technological changes are symptomatic of a deeper fear of losing a certain way of life.
Studies have found those fears run much deeper than the casual skeptic and are remarkably difficult to dislodge once they’ve taken hold. That is a problem for governments, corporations, and all manner of institutions that want a quick turnaround in the shift to clean energy.
The conspiracy theories about wind energy have a long and storied history
Wind turbines are also very large and very visible. Climate science has known since at least the 1950s that carbon dioxide emissions would cause major and relatively rapid changes to our environment. But in those early days of renewable energy advocacy, much of the messaging came from those who wanted to rein in the power of oil and gas companies. This is still the most prominent narrative in some corners of the fossil fuel industry today.
This fear that fossil fuel companies and billionaires would conspire against clean energy has long been part of popular culture. One of the earliest examples is the Simpsons episode “King Size Homer”, where the nuclear power mogul Mr Burns uses a tower to obscure the sun and make his residents of Springfield reliant on his product.
The scene was obviously hyperbole, but it played on a real anxiety: fossil fuel incumbents would try to stall and slow the adoption of clean energy. They have.
In 2004, then–Australian Prime Minister John Howard created an advisory group of fossil fuel executives to find ways to slow the growth of renewables. Calling themselves the Low Emissions Technology Advisory Group, the mandate was all about protecting coal, oil, and gas, not rapid decarbonization.
Wind turbines were, in that same period, also a prime target for conspiracy theorists due to their visibility. Coal mines, oil fields, and nuclear plants are hidden from public view. Wind turbines are generally placed on ridgelines, open plains, and other prominent positions, making them vulnerable to this type of visibility-based opposition.
Non-existent conditions like “wind turbine syndrome”, which some spreaders of FUD have tried to claim are responsible for everything from sleeplessness to depression, have been described by the medical profession as “non-disease”.
In the UK, my own research looked at conspiracy beliefs and found that they were far more predictive of opposition to wind farms than age, education level, gender, or political leaning. Conspiracy believers in one area, such as climate change or government control, were also likely to believe a conspiracy about wind farms. Kevin Winter and his colleagues in Germany made similar discoveries. But they, like my colleagues and I, hit a barrier: the results say almost nothing about how to shift views.
Changing minds
Opposition to wind farms based on conspiracy theories is both evidence-resistant and fundamentally different from someone saying they don’t like the view of a wind turbine. As Winter and his colleagues noted, it is “rooted in people’s worldviews”.
Wind turbines are enormous and highly visible structures. Supporters of clean energy see them as markers of progress, modernity, and solutions to the climate crisis. Detractors of wind turbines have various reasons, but many of them ultimately come back to control. Lack of control over one’s neighbourhood, government overreach, the internet (read: our enemies are in your faces), and resentment about the clean energy transition are all big themes.
Behind all of this are more fundamental, cultural changes. People are trained to associate fossil fuels with a golden age of prosperity and growth. To reflect on the externalities of coal, oil, and gas is, for some, to deny the country’s success and to have a different type of future. That is to be “anti-reflexive”. Trump’s entire rhetoric is one of nostalgia for the fossil fuel economy.
Conspiracy beliefs and cultural identity
There is also a strong sense of identity politics at play. In some online spaces (yes, I’m looking at you, manosphere), being overly concerned about climate change is weak and effeminate. For many baby boomers, particularly white heterosexual men, the energy transition is a loss of control and normality in a world that used to favour them.
Wind turbines, then, are about more than energy. They are also about culture, control, and power. In many ways, they are the canary in the coal mine. Trump’s attacks on “windmills” and his conspiratorial claims about wind farms find an audience of people who take the former president’s everyman act as gospel. He is their weather vane on the energy transition, their canary, the focus of his followers’ energies.
But they’re not just attacking wind turbines. Trump doesn’t care about birds or whales; he cares about power and control.
