Trump’s bitter dislike of renewable energy first erupted publicly 14 years ago in a seemingly trivial spat over wind turbines visible from his Scottish golf course. As Trump returns to Scotland this week, though, he is using the US presidency to squash clean power, with major ramifications for the climate crisis and America’s place in the world.
Although Trump failed in his legal attempt to halt the Scottish wind farm, an enduring scorn towards renewables appears to have been seeded that now has global consequences.
As president, Trump has declared wind and solar projects unwelcome in the US, barring them from federal lands and signing a vast spending bill that demolishes support for a nascent industry that held the promise of revamping the American economy while cutting dangerous planet-heating pollution.
It’s so wild. I vacationed in Northern England, about an hour south of Scotland, in Tynemouth, and our whole family found the offshore turbines to be magical.
There’s ruins of like a massive 4-6 story monastery from the 15th century, and it’s wild because the remnants of the one wall are the tallest thing in town, and have been for centuries. There’s literally paintings and drawings going back centuries showing it, and centuries and centuries of people living in the shadow of this partial massive monument that no longer exists.
It’s super interesting, but there’s also something kind of inherently scary and depressing about feeling like you’re seeing ancient remnants of some massive great thing that can no longer be done.
But then at a foggy sunset we saw the off shore turbines and it was genuinely uplifting and magical in a solar punk way. Just the blades peaked out of the fog, and similar to the monastery ruins, they looked too big to be created by humans, but these were actually still working. It felt like it was providing a glimpse into our future massive endeavours, and was one of the most magical moments of the whole trip.
Edit: pictures