Is there a single person who things Trump gives a single damn about the birds? It is obviously just a pretext.
Is there a single person who things Trump gives a single damn about the birds? It is obviously just a pretext.
This can be seen by the changes to the interpretation of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) his administration made in 2017 during his first term.
Briefly, they said it only prohibited intentional killing of birds. So say I wanted to pave over some wetlands that are a crucial nesting grounds for some birds that are covered by the MBTA to build a parking lot.
Before, the near universal interpretation of the MBTA by nearly everyone in any of the countries that are a party to the treaty (US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Russia) was that I can't put my parking lot there.
Under the Trump interpretation as long as I'm not building my parking lot there to intentionally kill the birds I can do it.
This was overturned in court in 2020. Just before leaving office in 2021 they tried to again make that the interpretation.
Wind turbines are an issue but approximately 0% of the 30% decline in US birds since the 1970s
Edit: to be specific to Trump, funding for bird conservation has been an issue under his administrations and he's weakened things like migratory bird treaty act. Obviously he doesn't care about birds and the bird community is very frustrated with him
As you said, that has nothing to do with the actual preference for fossils vs. turbines, but a great point nonetheless.
Fossil fuels also kill millions of animals every year (not just birds), and harm the health of humans. Even ignoring the long-term effects of CO2, fine particulates cause respiratory problems, higher blood pressure, and can cause cancer. The tricky bit is you can draw a straight line from the burning of coal to any particular (heh heh) death, it is just a statistical shift in health outcomes.
Anyway, all of that absolutely dwarf the birds getting killed by wind farms.
Also, it turns out that bird flight patterns are very stable from year to year, so they study flight patterns, and place the windmills out of the way.
and the noise causes cancer