Trump Bribes Company $1 Billion To Stop Offshore Wind

Maybe he hates offshore wind projects because breezes
mess up his hair? In any event, Trump, having lost
court battles to stop offshore wind installations,
has resorted to basically bribery with taxpayer dollars.

As we've talked about here a few times, Donald Trump hates wind generation. Especially offshore wind. 

He tried new anti-offshore wind regulations and pronouncements, only to be repeatedly shot down by the courts. So, Trump has gone straight to corruption. He's now successfully stopped an offshore wind installation with what amounts to a $1 billion bribe. 

Here it is from CNN:

"The Trump administration announced it will pay nearly $1 billion to French energy giant TotalEnergies in exchange for the company abandoning plans to build offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean and instead pursue fossil fuel project in the U.S." 

Yes, that's 'your tax dollars not at work. Trump is using tax revenue - and a lot of it to - pay somebody to not do something. 

It's not a direct raid on the treasury. Instead the Trump administration is paying back TotalEnergies for federal leases it bought during the Biden administration. So the money Biden raked in for the federal government is getting pissed away all because wind turbines are against Trump's aesthetics. 

The Trump gang has already stopped approving federal permits for renewable energy projects. That move killed offshore wind projects that were in early development. 

This goes against the wishes of numerous clean energy companies and several state governments. Those entities think offshore wind is a win-win: It generates badly needed electricity while also avoids the fossil fuels that contribute to ever-worsening climate change crisis. 

The more recent bribe, as I insist on calling it,  ries to make sure companies can't continue building under any future administration that has a friendlier attitude toward offshore wind, as CNN reports. 

In any event, Trump's bribe means 4 gigawatts of electricity will not be generated for houses and businesses in the U.S. 

TotalEnergies doesn't even get to decide how to spend the bribe money. To keep the Orange One happy, the company will develop a new liquified gas plant in Texas that will help export U.S. LNG overseas to Europe, per their agreement with the Trump administration.   

The company will also do some oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. and shale oil projects elsewhere in the U.S. 

Burn that fossil fuel, baby!  103 degrees during March in Kansas isn't nearly hot enough. Gotta get that climate really boiling. 

The deal is "an outrageous misuses of taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly when they need it the most," said Ted Kelly of the Environmental Defense Fund.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says offshore wind is "one of the most expensive" forms of energy and is only produced when wind is blowing. I guess he never heard of batteries that store electricity and keep the juice flowing until the wind blows again. Which it almost always does in the wide open ocean. 

It's true offshore wind power is expensive because it's, well, offshore. But wind has no fuel costs. And CNN points out that states negotiate set power price agreements with offshore wind producers that don't fluctuate like natural gas and oil does. 

As with every stunt Trump and his minions pull, I see lawsuits coming with this. 

Canarymedia com explains:

"....offshore wind experts said that no process exists for Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)  to return the funds it collects from leasing federally controlled waters.

'There are significant questions about under what authority Interior is doing this,' said Elizabeth Klein, who led BOEM from 2023 to 2025 during the Biden administration"

 This Orange Briberymight  create broader problems beyond encouraging fossil fuel consumption, which can only worsen climate change. As NPR points out:

"Industry analysts say the agreement threatens to undermine business confidence in the United States by exerting unprecedented executive power to influence the private sector,"

Back in the day, like it or not, Republicans preferred to leave business alone. Let them do their thing with a little regulation or government interference as possible. So much for that. MAGA has turned that on its head. 

NPR's reporting goes on to explain that by stopping projects he doesn't like, Trump risks messing up infrastructure spending across the economy, not just in offshore wind. The uncertainty this creates could make infrastructure projects move more slowly and become expensive. 

The uncertainly goes into fossil fuel plant and oil production projects, which Trump keeps telling us he loves so much.

"When you're building a power plant or thinking about oil production, you're thinking not just about the current administration, you're thinking about the next couple of decades.....And the pendulum swing is a real policy risk," said Timothy Fox of ClearView Energy Partners. 

All this is one of Trump's few "skills."  His chaos causes so much uncertainty that investors, companies, and just regular people don't know what the next best course of action is.  Ultimately, nothing gets done.

Except Trump and his oligarch friends get ever more richer at our expense.   

Judge Overturns Trump Block On New England Offshore Wind Project

One of the turbines being built buy Revolution Wind, off
the New England coast. The Trump administration keeps
trying to shut it down, but the courts keep allowing
construction to continue. 

 Donald Trump keeps trying to shut down a huge wind energy project off the New England coast, but judges keep shutting down Trump. 

The latest hit came on Monday, when a federal judge overturned an Interior Department order that halted construction of the $6.2 billion offshore wind project.

It looks like Trump and his minions will need to come up with better excuses to shut down wind projects. 

 According to Politico:

"The injunction issued by Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia allows construction to resume at Revolution Wind, a 65-turbine project capable of powering 350,000 homes. It marks the second time Lamberth has overturned an Interior order seeking to halt construction of the project off Connecticut and Rhode Island .

In September, he rejected Interior's claim that the project constituted a threat to national security, calling it the height of 'arbitrary and capricious action."

His minions at Interior keep coming up with reasons they think will stick when it comes to shutting dow the windmills, like national security or messing with radar or they kill birds. As if Trump was the nation's Ornithologist In Chief or something. 

However, Trump's lifetime of literally tilting at windmills keeps failing because of his inability to keep his mouth shut. 

Trump keeps saying the quiet part out loud. Just last Friday, Trump bragged about stopping wind farms when he met with oil executives.  

Trump has also said, repeatedly, that he would never approve wind energy projects. "I've told my people we will not approve windmills.......Maybe we get forced to do something because some stupid person in the Biden administration agreed to do something years ago. We will not approve any windmills in this country," Trump has said. 

Trumps minion's are almost as bad at this. As Politico reports, "(Judge) Lamberth said his concerns were 'heightened' after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum criticized offshore wind projects in December 'for a variety of reasons unrelated to national security.'"

So, basically, Lamberth saw through all the smokescreens the Trump people were putting up. Lamberth said in his ruling that the government failed to come up with any new information to justify a halt to the Revolution project, which is already about 90 percent complete. 

Revolution wind said they were losing $1.4 million a day, and noted the Defense Department approved the project before Trump returned to office in January, 2025. 

New England states had solidly backed Revolution Wind and were obviously happy with Monday's ruling. "Federal interference has stood in the way of lower energy costs and good-paying jobs, but today's ruling puts Revolution Wind back on track," Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday. 

As USA Today explains, despite Trump's efforts, wind and solar were at least until recently two of the fastest rowing energy sectors in the U.S. Solar and wind produces as much s 17 percent of the nation's electricity in 2024. Land based wind turbines produce around 10 percent of United States electricity. 

Trump hates solar and wind power . He loves oil and coal. But the forces of commerce and business will keep overwhelming him. Probably with the help of the courts. 

Report: Heat Waves Now Killing One Person Every Minute Around Globe

A report in the medical journal The Lancet said that
with climate change, heat waves on average are killing
one person per minute. 

As we head into winter, we don't think about heat waves all that much, but they're still making the news. 

Mostly because of their increasing intensity and increasing risk of death associated with these events, all due to climate change. 

As Grist tells us: 

"Extreme heat now kills one person every minute, according to the report, noting that the rate of heat-related deaths has risen 23 percent since the 1990s - a trend the authors attribute in large part to planetary warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The vast majority of the heatwave days endured worldwide between 2020 and 2024 would not have occurred in the absence of climate change."

The news is from "Countdown On Health and Climate Change" which is compiled by researchers around the world and has been published yearly since 2015 in British medical journal Lancet. 

These annual reports always seem to have bad news. Grist notes that the 2020 report said that climate change threatened to undermine the past 50 years of gains in public health. This year's report said that loss has already begun, thanks in large part to the increasing heat deaths. 

But it's not just the heat. Hot weather worsens drought, which can in turn worsen forest fires. Deaths might well be increasing due to tiny particles these fires emit.

One for-instance is last January's horrible wildfires around Los Angeles. The official death toll is around 30. But, as we noted in September, studies indicate the actual death toll might have been closer to 440, based on a review of death records around the time of the fires. 

Heat waves and droughts contribute to food insecurity, which in turn can fire up political instability. Tropical diseases are spreading away from the equator, as insects that can spread them find they can increase their range as the planet warms. 

Climbing global temperatures and heat waves are also sapping productivity and the economy. 

The 2025 Lancet report puts all these factors in stark relief. The World Health Organization, citing the report, motes that 640 billion potential labor hours were lost in 2024, with productivity losses amounting to $1.09 trillion in U.S. dollars.  

Battling climate change appears to have economic benefits, according to the report. An estimated 160,000 premature deaths are now being avoided yearly because coal-powered plants have shut down. Renewable energy now accounts for 123 percent of global electricity, and that has created about 16 million jobs worldwide. 

We have a lot of statistics here, but remember, there are real people behind all those numbers. We, as a global population have to decide: Are we going to let more and more people die in a increasingly hostile climate world, or are we going to build up a cleaner, safer future and create a higher standard of living in the process?

Most of the 1% don't care whether people live or die in a climate-ravaged world. They just want to hang on to their billions. But there's far more of us than them. Let's hope, in a peaceful way, we can overwhelm that 1% and find our way to a cleaner, cooler future. 

The cynic in me is skeptical. But you gotta hang on to hope, too. 

Trump Cancels Green Energy Projects In Mostly Blue States To "Punish" Democrats For Disobeying His Lordship.

Trump canceled nearly $8 billion in clean energy projects,
and many observers think this to punish states
that lean Democratic. 

Democrats are "the enemy" in Donald Trump's world. 

So why not make the best of a government shutdown to punish those Democrats?

Per the Washington Post:

"The Energy Department on Wednesday canceled $7.56 billion in funding for 223 projects aimed at research and deployment of clean energy and other climate-friendly technology mainly in Democratic-led states."

People in the Trump administration could barely keep a straight face when they said that this wasn't a punishment against Democrat-led states. No! It was just about rooting out waste of taxpayer dollars. 

 More WaPo

"An Energy Department press release late Wednesday said the projects 'did not adequately advance the nations energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.' 

But of course the Trump people just can't help themselves.  The money that was shitcanned was "Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left's climate agenda," said Office of Management and Budget Director in a post on X.

So much for high government officials showing any semblance of dignity. 

 Of the affected states, 17 are led by Democrats, and seven are led by Republicans. But one of those Republican-led states is Vermont. The governor, Phil Scott is a moderate, non-MAGA type, and as everybody knows, Vermont is politically as blue as blue can get.

The cuts include:

$1.2 billion for a public/private partnership to kick start the hydrogen industry in California.

$1.1 billion in energy grants for Washington State, including the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub. 

$400 million to add 28 gigawatts of new energy generation the Minnesota power grid, mostly from wind and solar.

$90 million to build Pennsylvania's biggest solar array on the site of an old coal mine. 

$30 million for battery storage at a California children's hospital. 

Under the Trump administration, the job market is getting shaky. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the hydrogen project would have created 200,000 jobs.

But screaming that climate change is a hoax is more important than creating jobs, I guess. 

The cuts we're talking about here. came on the same day the Trumpsters froze $18 billion in funding for two big infrastructure projects in New York City.  The city is represented in Congress by some of the nation's most prominent and popular representatives. 

One of those New York Democratic congress people is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who said, "Instead of playing politics with the shutdown, President Trump should be working on bipartisan solutions to lower Americans' costs and create jobs."

Good luck with that. Trump spent the weekend playing golf. To be fair, the weather was awfully nice. 

As CNBC reported, some of the projects involve manufacturing, which Trump allegedly wants to promote. For example, $500 million was earmarked for a project that produces carbon-neutral cement. Another canceled project in Massachusetts was aimed at manufacturing low carbon cement.  

But the Trump and his minions don't care. It's all about revenge and whining instead of governance with these folks. 

Donald Trump's Climate Remarks In UN Speech Were, Um, Something

Trump had some rather, um, interesting things to say
at the UN General Assembly Tuesday, including
some wild assertions regarding 
climate change and clean energy. 

That was quite a speech Donald Trump gave at the United Nations Tuesday. 

I wish I thought to count the number of untruths utter during the speech.  It sure had me reaching for my Tylenol, despite Trump and RFK's distain for the pain medication. 

Since this is a weather and climate blog, I'll ignore for all most of the problematic things Trump said on a wide variety of topics, and stick to the subject at hand here. 

Trump had plenty so say on climate change and clean energy in the rambling, hour long address.  They were things we heard from him before, that climate change is a hoax, that clean energy is bad, yada, yada, yada. 

Still, it's worth exploring just what he said, and doing some fact checking, just for laughs and giggles. 

As always, Trump has a remarkably dark vision of the world.

Climate change, he said, is "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.....The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they're heading down a path of total destruction."

I suppose we can make a case that we are eventually "heading down a path of total destruction," but that's not because climate change is a hoax. It's more because that climate change is inflicting more and more and worse and worse weather disaster on the world's populace. 

Trump dismissed the often forecasts climate change scientists have made over the years. "All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong....They were made by stupid people."

Never mind that climate prediction models, even those made half a century ago, were more or less accurate. But I guess we have to ignore all that, since scientists with years of education and training are clearly just stupid people.

Trump stuck with the subject: "They said global warming will kill the world, but then it started getting cooler. So now they could just call it climate change, because that way, they can't miss. It's climate change, because if it goes higher or lower whatever the hell happens, there's climate change."

I think Trump is referring to a worn out trope about some publications way back when the Bee Gees were discoing their way to fame and fortune back in the 1970s. 

The world started to warm a bit starting near the turn of the 20th century as our burning of fossil fuels began to have an effect. But then there was a very slight cooling trend from the 1940s to the 1970s.  That cooling trend is now understood to be the result of air pollution that dimmed the sun a little. Plus a natural climate cycle contributed a tiny bit to that cooling. 

By the 1970s, sensationalistic magazines informed us based on that bit of cooling a new ice age was coming. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, most climate scientists were accurately convinced the world was going to warm up. 

They were right, obviously. Air pollution was cleaned up, the sun shone more brightly as a result, the climate cycle ended, and that's when climate change really rocketed up. 

Trump added another overused trope when he made that crack about the terminology regarding global warming changed to climate change.  Calling it climate change is actually more accurate. Sure, the world is warming up.  But that's causing bigger storms, bigger floods, bigger droughts. Saying it's global warming is incomplete since so many other things are going on, too. 

But anyway, Trump plowed on. 

"Immigration and the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world........Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on those two subjects. You need strong borders and traditional energy sources if you are going to be great again."

He had more to say on the topic.   

"(Europe) has a long way to go, with many countries being on the brink of destruction because of their green energy agenda....Both the immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe."

It's probably way too much to get into immigration policy here, but I'm at a loss how clean energy will mean the end of nations. Trump didn't explain it, other than to say countries who have green energy policies allow the nations that emphasize fossil fuel to take all the manufacturing jobs somehow. 

Back in July, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared the world has "passed the point of no return" on the shift to renewable energy and said the fossil fuel era will end soon.  And I haven't seen evidence that nations with stricter green energy policies are doing worse than ones clinging to dependence on fossil fuel.

Trump also said that clean energy is too expensive and "doesn't work."  Which leaves me mystified.

If it doesn't work and is too expensive, why was 80 percent of the growth in electricity generation around the world from renewable and nuclear sources. And why does solar and wind account for 16 percent of U.S. electricity, surpassing coal?

You'd think the U.S. and other nations and international business interests would have long since abandoned renewables if they "didn't work." But whatevs. 

Trump had a wee bit of accuracy when it comes to China. He said China produces most of the world's wind technology, but doesn't use wind technology, Instead, it relies on coal and gas. 

That's partially true. Wind turbines and solar accounts for 20 percent of China's electricity generation, but China is still the world's largest coal consumer. In 2024 China accounted for 58 percent of global coal use.

It seems like much of the coverage of Trump's UN speech centered around a malfunctioning teleprompter and balky escalator at the UN. 

But Trump's climate and clean energy remarks, along with a whole host of other weird things he said. are an embarrassment to the U.S. And puts the world in just a little more danger it certainly does not need.  

Trump's Department Of Energy Apparently Has Never Heard Of Batteries For Clean Energy

If you take Trump's Department of Energy at face
value, then they apparently are unaware of the
concept of batteries. 

 Let's check in with those electricity generating wizards at the U.S. Department of Energy, shall we?

They had this to say on X

"Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it's dark outside, and the wind is not blowing."

Hoo boy. 

Could it be that the fine Trumpian folks at DOE have never heard of this nifty gadget called a battery?

They're amazing! The sun's out, and the wind is blowing and all those solar panels and wind turbines charge up those nifty batteries. 

Then the sun goes down and the wind goes calm, and those batteries supply electricity until the wind blows and the sun shines again. 

Those DOE guys and gals should check those batteries out! 

I'm sure DOE loved the community post on the X pointing out batteries exist in the real world, if not in the MAGA atmosphere.

 The comments on that @Energy post are pretty withering, as you can imagine. The first comment I saw when I last looked at it came from Josh Morgerman (@icylcone) who wrote, "This is quite possibly the stupidest tweet I've ever seen from any government account, in any country, anywhere on Earth."

Can't argue with that! 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom as he does so much, couldn't resist the urge to troll DOE, and by its extension Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Newsom's staff posted the following on X: "We're excited for the Trump administration to learn about BATTERIES(we have them here in California and they've helped the Golden State shift to green, clean energy AND keep the lights on)."

Even Elon Musk weighed in, pointing out the availability of batteries. His response to the @Energy tweet was "Um....hello?"

Then again, a some named Emily on X (Emnode) wrote "It's crazy how much money Elon Musk spent to buy the United States government and leave us with a Department of Energy that doesn't know batteries exist."

By the way, people use electricity during the day,  believe it or not, so those solar panels come in handy on sunny days, with or without batteries.  And, believe it or not, the wind sometimes blows at night. 

Of course, we actually doubt the people at the Department of Energy are as stupid as they pretend to be.  (Quite an aspiration, pretending to be as stupid as Lauren Boebert).

We're picking on Wright and his department for stupidity, but they know what they're doing. I'm quite sure they are aware batteries exist. OK, I hope they really understand batteries exist. 

This ignorant posting is all about a larger Trump administration effort to spread misinformation. And to turn the public away from clean energy. 

After all, the official Trump position is that climate change is - against all evidence - a hoax and therefore clean energy is verboten. 

There's a percentage of Americans who don't understand solar and wind power and how they relate to batteries, so Wright is appealing to that base,

What the Department of Energy and its Secretary Wright and his Department of Energy is doing is blasting misinformation to convince people who don't have a lot of knowledge about clean energy.

For the rest of us, the misinformation is meant to make the rest of us mistrust solar and wind power. They hope enough to turn the majority of the public against it, so that climate changing fossil fuel will reign supreme. 

Wright, after all, is the former CEO of two former fossil fuel companies, specializing in shale gas and oil.   

 I don't have a problem with people questioning the efficacy of solar and wind power. As long as the questioning is based on reality and facts. Questioning anything when it's based on facts is a great way to make things better, no matter what you're talking about. 

But as climate change continues to take its worsening toll, we'd better be promoting and improving clean energy. Trump and his minions live in the 1950s, when we didn't know much about fossil fuel and how they contribute to climate change. 

Good changes happen as society learns more information.  The Trump administration, and people who work for him, are trying to take information away from the public. Because it benefits them, and to hell with everyone else.  

Trump Hatred Of Wind Power Comes To New England: He Stopped A Nearly Completed Offshore Wind Project

The Trump administration has unwisely paused
a nearly complete offshore wind project off
the coast of Rhode Island. 

Donald Trump is continuing his war on wind power, doubling down since my August 22 report on the issue.   

An almost completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island is almost complete, but Trump pulled the plug on it anyway. 

Per ABC News:

"Danish wind farm developer Orsted says the Revolution Wind project is about 80 percent complete, with 45 out of 65 turbines already installed. 

Despite that progress - and the fact that the project had cleared years of federal and state reviews - the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management issued the order Friday, saying the federal government needs to review the project and 'address concerns related to the protection of national security interest of the United States.'"

The Trump administration didn't say what those security issues are. My guess is there aren't any, it's just that our Dear Orange Leader just hates wind power, and that makes him feel insecure?

Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont decried the stop-work order and will do everything they can to reverse the Trump decision. 

Revolution Wind is evaluating the financial effects of stopping construction. They are also considering legal options, as you would expect. 

Of course, we live in a new, rough era now. Even if judges rule against Trump, as they probably will, Trump will just ignore any rulings. 

Workers who have been building the work farm are perplexed and angry.

Union members are hoping to get back to work, somehow. The construction jobs required skilled labor, and payed six figures. Trump killed some really good jobs. 

Per USA Today:

"'A lot of building trades workers, a lot of union workers, voted for Donald Trump and his team. But they didn't vote to have union jobs shut down,' said Patrick Crowley, the president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, which represents the contractors. 'It shouldn't work like this.'"

Not everyone opposes Trump's move against the Revolution Wind Farm. For instance, the fishing industry in Rhode Island is generally against the wind farm, saying it would damage fishing grounds and negatively impact the ocean. 

 The wind farm is fairly far offshore, located about 15 miles south of the Rhode Island shore; 32 miles southeast of Connecticut and 12 miles southwest of Martha's Vineyard. 

This project was going to be Rhode Island and Connecticut's first offshore wind farm, and would be able to power more than 350,000 homes.  

By the way, this affects us here in Vermont, since we're part of the New England electrical grid. 

Per offshorewind.biz:

"Katie Dykes, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) pointed out that ISO New England, the regional grid operator, said it was counting on that supply to keep the grid stable.

In a statement on August 25, ISO New England said it was expecting the project to come online and that the project was included in its analyses of near-term and future trip reliability. "Delaying the project will increase risks to reliability,' ISO New England stated."

Trump's move against Revolution Wind has other left companies wondering if their in-progress green energy projects will get the axe. Environmental groups are wondering the same thing. USA Today again: 

"'Pulling the plug sends a chilling signal to investors and developers that the U.S. cannot be relied upon to honor it commitments, even when project are 80 percent built  While China outspends us four-to-one one energy and transmission infrastructure to power its AI driven economy, the U.S. is stopping a fully permitted, privately, capitalized project that would strengthen our energy security. That is a dangerous path. Investors, workers, and ratepayers deserve better," the American Council on Renewable Energy said a statement. 

The wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island that Trump and this minions are stopping ongoing construction. Or at last trying to get something transactional about it. 

As Axios notes. Earlier this year the Trump Interior Department halted the Empire Wind project off New York's coast, which crews had already 

 Earlier this year, according to Axios, Interior temporarily halted Equinor's Empire Wind project off New York's coast, which had recently begun construction. We don't know what will happen with that, but did say that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signaled to him some willingness to move forward on a gas pipeline project. 

Elsewhere, court documents released about a week ago say that the Trump administration is reconsidering prior approval for the Maryland Offshore Wind Project. That one is a planned $6 billion wind project offshore of Ocean City, Maryland. 

This fight over turbines, as mentioned, is just part of Trump's personal hatred of wind farms. The speculation is he considers wind turbines built off the coast of his Scottish golf course ugly, so as revenge he's going to fightable wind project. 

But who knows?

Here's one of the latest things he's had to say about the, per the Washington Post. 

"'They're ugly, they don't work, they kill your birds,' Trump said. 'They're bad for the environment. And if you look at them from a house, your house is worth less than 50 percent. So I'm trying to have people learn about wind real fast.'"

All of what he said is not true, or, at the very least, exaggerated. Unless you're taking about matters of taste. If you think they're ugly, then to you, they are.  

As for birds, cats kill a staggering 2.4 billion with a "b" birds annually. Glass windows are the demise of almost 600 million birds each year. Collisions with vehicles kill about 214 million birds. And wind turbines kill about 230,000 birds annually. So it's an unfortunate, but small percentage. 

I'm not sure how wind turbines are bad for the environment, at least compared to the fossil fuels that are changing the climate so radically that they could become an existential threat to humanity if we keep burning oil and gas and coal the way we are now. 

 

Trump's Hate Of "Green New Deal" Will Especially Hurt Red States That Voted For Him

The "Big Beautiful Bill" is anything but for the clean
energy industry in the United States.

 Donald Trump hates so called "green energy," which is produced by sources other that fossil fuel, such as wind and solar. He calls that type of thing the "Green New Scam."

He is reversing, or plans to reverse, subsidies to states for that type of project. 

The green energy cutbacks are largely contained in the (ugh!) "One Big Beautiful Bill" that passed the House last past week. The bill has moved on  to the Senate, where it's their problem, at least for now. 

As it stands now, billions of dollars in tax incentives within former President Joe Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act are on the chopping block. 

The bill would also end a tax credit for up to $7,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle. That would of course slow the shift to EVs. \\slow the shift to EVs.

The "Big Beautiful Bill" would also end subsidies and tax breaks for the clean energy industry. 

Trouble is, most of green money is flowing to Red States that voted for Trump. 

Republican Congress creature who love Trump face a dilemma.  All this is going to hurt the very people they represent. 

Per Washington Post:

"Republican senators now must grapple with the reality behind the slogan: Cutting hundreds of billions of dollars of clean energy subsides that are flowing to their own states."

'The majority of the government spending is creating jobs and manufacturing capacity in red states,' said Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, 'So this puts Republicans, generally and now in the Senate, in the position of having to choose whether to support the party line or maintain support for government programs that are creating a lot of economic activity in the states."

Given the recent track record of Republic Congress Creatures, I'd bet on fealty to Trump instead of what their constituents want.  That's particularly true of House Republicans, whose districts are so gerrymandered that they'll get voted in no matter what. After all, some hard core MAGAs in these districts love Trump so much they'll vote against their own interests every time.

For Senators, it's more complicated.  They represent entire states. Even the hard core red states aren't exclusively Republican.  They can still lose if Democrats turn out in force and a percentage of Republicans get disillusioned by the Trump policies and by extension their senators. 

And there will be activism. Forces are gathering against legislation to kill green energy programs. As Washington Post reports in their article about this:

"Climate advocates are mobilizing against the legislation, warning the it threatens to cede the United States' leadership role in global efforts to combat climate change. They plan to pressure Republican senators by citing home-state economic damage."

Now that the "One Big Beautiful Bill" (I still have trouble writing that without getting the dry heaves) is now in the Senate, it's probably in for a rough ride. Partly for the green energy cutbacks and certainly for a myriad of other reasons.

As WaPo says, "To pass it, Trump will  need votes from Senate Republicans who have championed the green subsidies in their home states."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) one of the most vulnerable senators up for re-election next year, suggested....that he would push for a slower phaseout of the clean energy subsidies. An immediate phaseout, he said, would 'have a chilling effect" on 'future investments in the domestic energy sector. 

In Tillis' home state of North Carolina, the law has helped attract $23 billion in investment, according to data compiled by Atlas Public Policy and Utah State University. Forty-seven new facilities in the state - including a massive Toyota battery plant - could create about 20,000 new jobs, the data shows."

Of course, I'm not sure how a "slower phase out" would help much since the subsidies would still disappear, making investors less likely to risk their money in United States green energy. 

Tillis is probably trying to have it both ways. Like virtually all Republicans he's afraid of Donald Trump's wrath, yet he knows Trump's policies hurt the economy. Just speculation here, but perhaps Tillis is trying to buy time until Trump is no longer a problem so that the money flowing into his state through green energy subsidies will continue. 

Trump's ideas on clean energy indeed might also be shooting himself in the economic foot. Washington Post again: 

"Factories that would manufacture solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and other crucial pieces of America's energy future as envisioned by former president Joe Biden and Democrats are on the chopping block."

So, other countries will take over, reaping the economic benefits instead of the United States.  Clean industries in other nations probably shouldn't worry too much about Trump's tariff spree.   These overseas clean energy companies will just find other places to sell their wares,  After all, there's plenty of markets for solar panels, turbines, batteries in Europe, Asia, Africa and a host of other places.

Fossil fuel companies, of course, love the "Big Beautiful Bill."  The American Petroleum Institute said in a statement it will "help restore American energy dominance."

The Institute shouldn't be too sure about that. 

Over the past few decades, old, dirty coal fired plants have been decommissioned. If we're so bent on returning to fossil fuel and getting rid of clean energy, it won't be so easy to develop that infrastructure.

It's hard and takes years to build new coal and gas plants. Local opposition is sure to slow down any proposals to build them. Plus, it takes forever to get the supplies, engineers and construction workers to actually construct these things. 

Meanwhile, more than 80 percent of the electricity added to the power grid in 2024 came from solar panels and industrial batteries that store the energy they capture says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

There appears to be public support for at least some clean energy initiatives that are under the chopping block under the "Big Beautiful Bill."

A clear majority of Americans support the tax credits for electric vehicles.  Republicans obviously are less enthusiastic about the idea. But still, a Yale Program on Climate Change Communication poll found 42 percent of liberal or moderate Republican and 28 percent of conservative Republicans support the tax rebates for EVs.

We haven't even talked about how the Big Beautiful Bill advances Trump's efforts thwart efforts to fight climate change.  Which is itself a danger both to lives and the economy of the United States and the world. The increasingly extreme weather climate change has wrought is a drag on the economy, one that will continue to get worse.

Think about the disruption to industry as factories, offices and such are destroyed by giant storms, or at least shut down temporarily due to evacuations, power cuts and transportation disruptions. 

In addition to battling climate change, clean energy provisions are at least causing some benefits to employment and the economy in general for the population at large. The Big Beautiful Bill funnels money from a variety of worthwhile programs in favor of giving more money to a cadre of billionaires and millionaires, who certainly don't need it. 

It's a shameless transfer of money and power from most of us to a few very rich people. Of course, the Republicans who support this will lie their way through this, trying to convince the public - some successfully - that up is down and down is up. 

Such is the world we apparently live in these days.  

Biden Bans Offshore Oil Drilling, We'll See How Long It Takes For Trump To Reverse That

President Biden this week announcing a ban on oil
drilling in much of the offshore waters
around the United States.

 It might be a bit of a Hail Mary, and probably a bit Sysiphean, but President Joe Biden this week banned new offshore oil and gas drilling in almost all U.S. coastal waters.  

The move was an effort to at least throw a monkey wrench in incoming President Donald Trump's plans to, as he puts it, drill, baby drill. 

Climate change is part of Biden's motivation for this. "As the climate crisis continued to threaten communities across the countermand we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren," he said. 

Biden's move was also probably prodded by his memories of the big oil spill along the beaches of Santa Barbara, California in January, 1969.

".....drilling  off these coasts could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation's energy needs," Biden said in a statement. 

Biden's acton will at least delay the offshore part of incoming President Trump's climate-denying drill baby drill approach to fossil fuel extraction.

Trump continues to cling to the notion that climate change is a hoax, and that clean energy is basically worthless, so we have to keep burning fossil fuel. His brain hasn't really left the 1950s. And besides, the United States has never produced as much oil as we do now, even with efforts to transform to a "clean energy economy."

For his part, Trump said he would end Biden's drilling ban on "day one." 

"I will unban it immediately," Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, "I have the right to unban it."

Actually, he doesn't.

According to the Associated Press, Biden's authority to enact this ban is under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which allows the president to protect offshore areas.  Once a president does what Biden has done, an act of Congress is needed to undo it.

It's a Republican Congress full of Trump fanboys and girls, so no doubt they'll do the deed, but it will take a lot more longer to complete than it say, the act of throwing ketchup against a White House wall.

Environmentalists were strangely elated at this development, considering the Republican Congress will get rid of this order soon enough. A for instance from the AP: "This is an epic ocean victory!" said Joseph Gordon, campaign director for the environmental group Oceana. 

For a little while, anyway. 

As NPR explains, much of the ocean territory where Biden banned new drilling is not of immediate interest to oil companies, except for an area they're salivating over in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Still, the ever-present American Petroleum Institute, who spent last week throwing darts at Vermont's climate superfund law, are in a bit of a snit over Biden's move.

"American voters sent a clear message in support of domestic energy development, and yet the current administration is using its final days in office to cement a record of doing everything possible to restrict it," American Petroleum Institute president Mike Sommers said in a statement. 

Or did voters actually send that "clear message?"

Trump clearly won the election, but in the popular vote it was only a 49-48 split in the percentages. And I didn't see any polling during the election in which there was a huge groundswell of Americans demanding new drilling.

Sure, nobody wants to pay an arm and a leg for gasoline, or fuel oil, and I suppose increased domestic production would help tamp prices down. Though it's a global market, so world events could upset that anti-inflationary setup no matter how much oil the United States pumps out of the ground. 

Besides, at last check, the United States was producing more crude oil than any other nation at any time, says the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Given that fact it will be hard for Trump to increase oil production beyond where we're already at.  

Trump thinks his efforts will cut energy costs in half for consumers. That's a tall order, but he doesn't have a great track record of following through with his promises anyway, so take that with a grain of salt. 

Meanwhile, we're cranking out the oil and burning it up and making climate change worse and thus making disasters worse and making the world a more difficult place in which to live. 

Trump wants to make the U.S. dominant, all right. One of the main things we might well  be dominate at is making the most destructive contributions to climate change of any nation in the world.  

Canceled Biden Trip Would Have Been An Unintentional Climate Irony Moment

A huge coal train derailment in Pueblo, Colorado
on Sunday. It has blocked Interstate 25 since, snarling
traffic in the region. Photo is from Pueblo
County Sheriff's Office. 

President Joe Biden was supposed to travel to Pueblo, Colorado on Monday to talk about his clean energy initiative. 

He canceled at the last minute. He (quite reasonably, in my opinion) decided to instead hold meetings with his national security team regarding Israel's deadly war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 

The trip to Colorado would have been a bit of an ironic moment. Any trip to a U.S. city by the President would screw up local traffic, due to the security such a visit would entail.   

The traffic in Pueblo would be extra messed up by a Biden visit for this reason: A coal train Sunday derailed on a bridge above busy Interstate 25. The bridge collapsed, sadly killing a passing truck driver.  Coal spilled everywhere, closing the Interstate in both directions and disrupting traffic throughout the city. 

As of last night, Interstate 25 was still closed and was expected to remain that way at least until this afternoon (October 18) as tons of coal and wreckage are cleaned up. 

The Associated Press reports:

"A nine-mile stretch of I-25 - used by 39,000 to 44,000 vehicles daily - was shut down. Traffic was being detoured around the derailment site and through the town of Penrose, almost 30 miles west of Pueblo."

So yeah, pretty messy. Imagine mixing Biden's motorcade and security into that mess. 

 Coal isn't exactly clean energy.  It's one of the main, dirtiest culprit in causing climate change. Plus, the point of Biden's visit was to promote a clean energy industry aimed at muting the dangerous effects of climate change. 

It wasn't the entire coal industry's fault the derailment happened. Investigators think a broken rail was behind the disaster. 

But had Biden come to Pueblo to chat up his clean energy initiatives, the coal train disaster would have been pretty ironic.  I haven't heard of clean energy causing big problems like the train wreck, but maybe you can guide me toward an example.  

I get it that the situation in Gaza that Biden is dealing with is zillions of times worse and more complicated than the train derailment. But I can't resist highlighting the irony of the derailment and Biden's intentions for going to Pueblo.