Among the many topics covered in his three-hour interview with podcast juggernaut Joe Rogan on Friday, President Donald Trump raised the plight of the North Atlantic right whale, whose habitat he claims has been disturbed by massive offshore wind farms.
“I want to be a whale psychiatrist,” he quipped in a moment immediately stripped of context and made viral by Kamala Harris supporters to demonstrate the former president’s alleged senility.
But in this case Mr. Trump is right, at least according to a host of whale researchers and conservationists.
Since 2016, scientists have noted a significant increase in cetacean deaths across the East Coast of the United States. The numbers of North Atlantic right whales have plummeted from 400 to just 340. While unsure what is causing this rising mortality in dolphins, whales, and other sea creatures, the official position of the U.S. government is that it is NOT the industrial wind turbines that are being built off the coasts of places like Rhode Island and Virginia.
Despite these assurances, conservation groups like Surfrider and Clean Ocean Action are sounding the alarm. Last year, filmmaker Jonah Markowitz released a documentary attempting to prove a link between wind energy and whale deaths. Produced by Public, Thrown to the Wind is available to stream free on YouTube.
According to reporting by Public, the only real change in North Atlantic right whale habitat since 2016 is the construction of these wind farms. “Incidental harassment authorizations” (IHAs) are special permits authorized by the government to sanction whale harassment. Between June 2022 and August 2023, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) authorized 12 different one-year IHAs, with 10 more pending.
Concerned conservations attribute the whale deaths to two causes: increased boat traffic related to wind farm activity, and high-decibel sonar mapping which can cause whales to become confused and disoriented, separating calves from their mothers.
It was this second point Mr. Trump referenced on The Joe Rogan Experience.
“They say that the wind drives them crazy. You know, it’s a vibration. Because you know, those things are 50-story buildings, some of them. The wind is rushing, the things are blowing, it’s a vibration, and it makes noise. You know what it is? I want to be a whale psychiatrist. It drives the whales freaking crazy. And something happens with them. But for whatever reason, they’re getting washed up on shore. But the environmentalists don’t talk about it.”
The 1970s environmentalist movement was famously instrumental in saving several whale species from extinction, finally achieving a ban on commercial whaling in 1986. A century prior, it was ironically the oil and gas industry that largely stopped the whaling ships. The modern darling of the environmentalist movement is clean energy such as wind farms, intended to replace fossil fuels which are believed to cause climate change.
Americans who work in nature, both land and sea, have claimed for years that wind turbines have serious unintended consequences for animals, wildlife, and even human health. Their concerns have been ignored.
Some believe wind farms can cause birth deformities in mammals, but so far research is limited. One 2012 student paper submitted at the College of Veterinary Medicine in Lisbon, Portugal noted hoof deformities in Lusitano horses born near a wind farm. The deformities described are essentially boxy foot, or club foot. Before the wind farm was built, these deformities did not occur.
Other examples are similarly anecdotal. French farmers in Louire-Atlantique claim they’ve witnessed unexplained symptoms in their livestock since the arrival of a neighboring wind farm, including behavioral changes, reduced milk yields and diminished quality, and even higher death rates. In Taiwan, farmers in the Penghu region say 400 goats died on farms near wind farms in 2009.
A five-week study of geese in Poland found that the group of 40 geese located 50 meters from wind turbines performed poorly across a number of markers when compared with a group of 40 geese placed 500 meters from the turbines. Geese in the fist group gained less weight, had higher blood cortisol concentration, and displayed behavioral changes.
Impacts to bird populations are well known, with birds frequently dying upon impact with the massive rotating blades. In 2022, ESI Energy was sentenced in a Wyoming court for violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The company admitted at least 150 bald eagles and golden eagles have died at their wind farms since 2012.
Many believe human health is also affected. In 2021, a Belgian couple living near a wind farm was awarded over €100,000 by a French court for damages the turbines caused to their health. A 2006 study by Dr. Nina Pierport, who coined the term “wind turbine syndrome,” surveyed 38 people living near wind farms and noted symptoms ranging from nausea, tinnitus, and headaches to vision loss and heart failure.
This summer, beaches across Nantucket were forced to close as truckloads of fiberglass shards floated to shore from a fallen wind turbine blade. The collapsed 300-foot blade was part a $4 billion wind farm known as Vineyard Wind, the first large-scale offshore wind project in the nation. President Joe Biden’s Department of the Interior approved the project in May 2021, despite significant protest from island locals who insisted the eyesore would damage their tourism industry. According to one estimate, the wind farm will cost Nantucket up to $800 million in lost revenue over the next 30 years. Some surfers even believe wind farms will affect wave patterns, destroying their beloved breaks.
The Biden-Harris administration has signed a pledge to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030. Vineyard Wind provides a mere 0.8 gigawatts.
The turbine blade failure rate is 1.8%, according to trade publication Wind Power Engineering & Development. Which would mean we face a future where, if and when the Biden-Harris goal is achieved, over 30 turbine blades will break off into the ocean every single year.
In the waning weeks of Ms. Harris’ campaign, facing the end of his own term, the AP reports President Biden is spending billions of dollars to force through clean energy projects and fast-track approval for massive offshore wind farms. He wants to secure his legacy for dramatic climate action. Saving the whales is no longer in vogue.
