The Ugly Truth About Wind: Environmental Disaster Masquerading as Clean Energy

President Trump, with characteristic candor, recently cut through the rhetorical fog that surrounds America’s energy debate: "Windmills are an economic and environmental disaster. I don’t want even one built during my Administration. The thousands of dead and broken ones should be ripped down ASAP. Most expensive energy, only work with massive government subsidies, which we will no longer pay!" Hyperbole? Perhaps. But directionally, he is correct. Wind power is not the clean, economical salvation it has been marketed to be. It is, in fact, a massive public policy error, a boondoggle wrapped in green ideology and fueled by corporate rent-seeking.

It is time to ask a blunt question: Why are we still subsidizing wind energy at all? The federal government should not encourage, mandate, or fund the construction of even a single new turbine. Let those who wish to place them on private land to power a cabin or a mine do so at their own expense. But the days of carbon credits, production tax credits, and state renewable mandates funneling billions into wind development must end.

Let us begin with the environmental reality. Wind turbines are not clean. They are merely offshore pollution factories, outsourcing their damage upstream to Chinese rare earth mines and downstream to landfills. The construction of a single modern turbine demands approximately 1,200 tons of concrete, 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, and 2 tons of rare earth elements like neodymium and dysprosium. The mining and refining of these materials, often in regions with lax or nonexistent environmental standards, entails deforestation, radioactive tailings, water contamination, and massive carbon emissions. Billy Bob Thornton's character in Landman was not exaggerating when he quipped that a windmill will not offset the carbon it took to build it in its entire 20-year lifespan. For most turbines, that is literally true.

And then there are the birds. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that over 1.17 million birds are killed by turbine blades annually, including protected raptors like bald and golden eagles. One wind company, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, pled guilty in 2022 to killing 150 eagles with its turbines. Bats suffer even more dramatically, falling to both blade strikes and barotrauma. These are not isolated incidents. They are systemic. Unlike oil spills, they are not accidents, they are features of the technology. The phrase "environmental genocide" is not out of place.

Turbines do not only kill. They also rot. Most wind turbine blades are made from composite materials that cannot be recycled economically. So when their short 10-to-20-year lifespan ends, they are cut up and buried. Landfills in Wyoming and Texas now house thousands of these 100-foot fiberglass carcasses. Unlike nuclear fuel, which, while dangerous, is highly compact, can be stored securely, and may even be recycled in future reactor designs, wind waste is bulky, useless, and growing.

Now consider the economic argument. The Energy Information Administration reports that wind receives 52% of all federal energy subsidies, yet produces only about 10% of the nation’s electricity. These subsidies are not minor. The federal Production Tax Credit alone hands wind developers approximately $27.50 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced for a decade. That figure does not include state mandates, renewable energy credits, or the cost of transmission lines to connect remote wind farms to urban grids.

And despite these subsidies, wind is not cheap. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for wind may appear competitive on paper, but that metric ignores integration costs, backup requirements, and transmission infrastructure. Wind's average capacity factor hovers around 35%. Nuclear runs at over 90%. A wind farm needs nearly three times the installed capacity to match the annual output of a nuclear plant. But the grid cannot rely on wind output because the wind does not blow on demand. As such, wind necessitates backup from natural gas or even coal, ironically entrenching the very fossil fuels it was meant to displace.

California’s grid failures during recent heatwaves and Texas’s disastrous blackout in 2021 illustrate the peril of over-reliance on weather-dependent energy. When the wind stalls, the turbines stop. The electricity they were supposed to provide must come from somewhere else, and if that backup does not exist, people suffer. Grid operators now speak of the “duck curve” and “effective load carrying capability” to describe the unreliability of wind. But these are euphemisms. The plain truth is that wind is not dependable.

Defenders of wind will point to solar, which is also intermittent but far less criticized. The difference lies in solar’s predictable diurnal cycle, its compatibility with battery storage, and its relatively low land use compared to wind. Solar panels can go on rooftops and parking lots. Turbines require vast swaths of land. According to MIT, onshore wind needs about 100 times more land per terawatt-hour than nuclear power. It turns beautiful ridgelines and pastoral fields into spinning industrial zones. Communities across the country have begun to resist, passing local ordinances to block wind projects. Their instincts are right. The costs fall on them, while the profits flow elsewhere.

What, then, should replace wind in America’s energy portfolio? The answer is not difficult: next-generation nuclear, clean natural gas, and strategically deployed solar. Nuclear energy offers unmatched reliability, a near-zero carbon footprint, and minimal land use. Modern small modular reactors promise safety, flexibility, and better cost controls. While wind turbines last 10 to 20 years, nuclear reactors run for 60 to 80. Their upfront costs are higher, but their long-term value is far superior.

Natural gas, meanwhile, remains the indispensable backbone of the American grid. It is abundant, dispatchable, and relatively clean compared to coal. It also enables economic growth. During the shale boom, the US lowered carbon emissions faster than any other industrialized nation precisely because gas displaced coal. Let it now serve as the bridge to a nuclear-powered future.

And solar, unlike wind, is not a scam. Its costs have fallen dramatically. It requires no moving parts, creates less visual blight, and integrates easily with batteries and distributed energy models. A solar panel on a home adds value and resiliency. A turbine on a hill devalues homes and demands new transmission lines.

To be clear, none of this is to argue against innovation or clean energy. The United States must modernize its energy infrastructure, reduce emissions, and break its dependence on foreign energy sources. But wind does not serve that goal. It is a policy artifact, a holdover from the 1990s romanticism about green tech. What it needs now is a quiet burial, not a new round of subsidies.

If environmentalists were serious, they would champion nuclear. If free-market conservatives were serious, they would end wind subsidies. If the Biden administration were serious, it would not have wasted billions of taxpayer dollars building an industry whose fundamental physics make it unworkable. President Trump, to his credit, is willing to say what many others only whisper: The era of wind is over. Let us dismantle its rusting monuments and build instead the clean, reliable, sovereign energy future America deserves.

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