When Donald Trump recently claimed, during what was supposed to be a press conference about a European Union trade deal, that wind turbines were a "con job" that drive whales "loco," kill birds and even people, he wasn’t just repeating old myths. He was tapping into a global pattern of conspiracy theories around renewable energy—particularly wind farms. (Trump calls them “windmills”—a climate denier trope.)
Like 19th century fears that telephones would spread diseases, wind farm conspiracy theories reflect deeper anxieties about change. They combine distrust of government, nostalgia for the fossil fuel era, and a resistance to confronting the complexities of the modern world.
And research shows that, once these fears are embedded in someone’s worldview, no amount of fact-checking is likely to shift them.
A short history of resistance to renewables
Although we’ve known about climate change from carbon dioxide as probable and relatively imminent since at least the 1950s, early arguments for renewables tended to be seen more as a way of breaking the stranglehold of large fossil-fuel companies.
The idea that fossil companies would delay access to renewable energy was nicely illustrated in a classic episode of The Simpsons when Mr. Burns builds a tower to blot out the sun over Springfield, forcing people to buy his nuclear power.
Back in the real world, similar dynamics were at play. In 2004, Australian Prime Minister John Howard gathered fossil fuel CEOs to help him slow the growth of renewables, under the auspices of a Low Emissions Technology Advisory Group.
Meanwhile, advocates of renewables—especially wind—often found it difficult to build public support for wind, in part because the existing power providers (mines, oil fields, nuclear) tend to be out of sight and out of mind.
Public opposition has also been fed by health scares, such as “wind turbine syndrome.” Labeled a “non-disease” and non-existent by medical experts, it continued to circulate for years.