Closing the file on one case in the seemingly ever-expanding cabinet of insulting and unconstitutional Climate Cult boondoggles the feds and many international interests have forced us to fund, the Trump administration just pulled the proverbial plug on a highly controversial windfarm project tied to the government of New York State.
Leslie Eastman reports for Legal Insurrection that the involved government and corporate mendicants continued to move on the project, despite a Day One Trump Executive Order ending all new or renewed wind “leases” – aka all new and renewed approvals, permits, leases, and loans for both onshore and offshore wind projects – in so-called “federal” waters.
That’s correct, DESPITE Trump’s Day One order to end such projects and not add more, the NY state and corporate interests involved continued off the coast of the Empire State.
“The EO immediately paused all new and renewed federal leasing, permitting, and approvals for offshore wind projects on the Outer Continental Shelf and directed a comprehensive review of the federal government’s leasing and permitting practices for wind projects.
However, one Norwegian company decided to sail past that EO and continue construction on Empire Wind 1, a major offshore wind energy project being developed off the coast of New York, approximately 15–30 miles southeast of Long Island.”
The Empire Wind 1 project had become one of the high-profile facets of NY Governor Kathy Hochul’s (D) push to ban new oil or natural gas heat for state-located new homes by 2027 and, based on state statute, mandate 100-percent “zero-emission” electricity by 2040 and the phasing out of fossil fuels (including for road transport) by 2050.
And, of course, the Empress’s “energy-related/construction-related” diktats have been, and remain, part of a larger, worldwide, fearmongering campaign targeting cheap, easily used energy provided through petrochemical fuels.
Related: When Green Turns Blue: Texas Blackouts Linked to Frozen Wind Turbines | MRCTV
The fearmongering – itself tied to government supported climate propaganda of the most offensive and deceptive kind – tells us that such government meddling and control, such redirection of what should be private choices and resources, is for OUR good, and that it will save the world from their bogeyman, “anthropogenic climate change,” making the world cleaner and more livable.
But, first, their fears of “climate apocalypse” are unproven.
Second, people not only have different ideas on the tradeoffs between cleanliness, affordability, reliability, independence, and other factors in their lives, their own thoughts on these change from day to day.
And, even on the Climate Cult’s Quixotic “earth worship” level, windfarms are foes to large degrees.
As I wrote in 2019:
“(T)he Associated Press has noted that windfarms kill 573,000 birds each year. And, as shocking as it might seem, they also burst bat lungs. The turbines themselves require vast amounts of carbon-using energy to construct, including concrete, steel, and fiberglass blades that, in total, weigh between 800 and 900 tons – per turbine. All of this requires energy, to mine the ore, transport the raw materials, make, and transport and build on site. And the sites require vast access roads that destroy wildlife habitats, not to mention the bizarre health effects people cite when living near the infrasound created by mills, and the energy-intensive process of re-blading and refurbishing needed every 20 years.'
I also noted that the tons of poured concrete at the base of every single windmill not only emits CO2, it requires investment of “fossil fuel energy” to acquire and move the constituent elements for the concrete, mix them, and deliver them.
Writes Eastman:
“Norway-based Equinor, which already had all the necessary lease and permit approvals from the feds before Trump’s January 20 executive order went into effect, confirmed that it has started construction at the site — laying rock as the foundation for the giant 54 wind turbines — 15 miles off the coast of Long Beach.
Equinor will deliver the power by connecting to Con Edison’s electric grid via a cable link from the ocean floor to the substation at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park.”
But Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has announced suspension of all construction activities on the project.
“In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Burgum said the halt would allow for ‘further review of information that suggests the Biden administration rushed through its approval without sufficient analysis.’
…The order came two weeks after Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, asked Mr. Burgum in a letter to ‘do everything in your power’ to stop what he called an ‘underhanded rush’ to build the wind farm. Another Republican representative from New Jersey, Jeff Van Drew, has pressed Mr. Trump to put a stop to other wind farms that were planned in the Atlantic Ocean to provide renewable power to New Jersey.”
But the term “renewable” is misapplied when attached to any sources of energy that require some kind of human input to maintain. Wind farms require intensive maintenance, create refuse that resists natural decomposition, and are unreliable. The 2021 windfarm debacle in Texas stands as one of the most glaring examples of this reality. In that dark stretch, people lost their lives, and emergency crews had to use carbon-based energy sources to try to de-ice the wind turbines and offer backup energy to desperate residents.
Even wood-based heat requires human energy and effort to harvest and maintain, and all of these factors require a free market to allow individuals to assess their wants and needs and transmit that information to others, allowing for all resources – including human – to be allocated to their utmost… As a result, the term “renewable” really means “what the market incentivizes and can be maintained as a profitable part of human life.”
Adds Eastman:
“Mr. Trump’s stated opposition to windmills as a source of renewable energy has been seen as a serious threat by the offshore wind industry, which already was struggling to cope with global inflation and supply chain problems. Some projects that had been proposed off the East Coast have been canceled and others have lost financial backing from their sponsors.”
This ought to be a lesson – a lesson in economics, in human ethics, and in logic – telling the central-planners to lay off others and to allow others to organize their own lives.
It also ought to be a lesson reminding Americans that the US government actually has no constitutional role controlling “offshore” spaces. Such governmental control invites special interests to game the system, and pits various civilian subgroups against each other. No market valuation is allowed, and the problem of collective so-called “ownership” leads to mass disruption and disputation.
Utopian government controllers could do a much better service to people if they stayed out of their way, allowed private property control, and stopped pushing their attacks on cheap energy.
Billions of people in the future might thank them for such humility and for finally allowing them the chance to be free.
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— MRCTV (@mrctv) April 22, 2025