Wind Turbines are Not Bird Killers

Okay, I have a bone to pick with wind turbine haters: they are not killing birds at the magnitude described by President Trump. In fact, I'm quite certain that all of his skyscrapers and hotels have collectively been more responsible for bird deaths than all wind turbines in the US.

In remarks made last week at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, President Trump picked a fight with wind turbines, while discussing his plan to deregulate Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Under this initiative, states were given greenhouse gas targets to reduce emissions from power plants within their borders. Trump, while bashing wind turbines, accused the renewable energy source of killing scores of birds,referencing large masses of “killing fields” littering the area around the turbines.

According to estimates aggregated by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, cats are the biggest killers of birds, particularly migratory birds. Collisions from wind turbines kill a small fraction of birds in comparison to the damage that cats and glass buildings cause to the bird population. Seriously, it isn't hard to look up data.