Conspiracies Around Wind Farms: A Global Phenomenon

At a press conference that was supposed to be about a European Union trade deal, former U.S. President Donald Trump lapsed into one of his favorite topics: climate change and renewable energy. Turbines, he said, were a “con job.” They cause whales to go “loco.” They “kill all the birds, baby birds.” He even implied that they cause cancer in humans.

The blasts were billed as news by those who take Trump’s every outburst as a news cycle-defining moment. In truth, however, they were just the latest and loudest repetition of conspiracy theories about wind power and solar energy that have been circulating the world for decades. If turbines send whales mad, we might also ask what it is about renewable energy that sends Trump—and so many others—into such a rage.

Wind turbines are often described by climate deniers as “windmills.” This name dates back at least to the 1970s. (The choice of “mill” seems related to oil deniers’ attempts to question the science by describing carbon dioxide as a “gas guzzler.”) In fact, anti-wind or anti-renewables conspiracies are part of a much longer trend.

The world’s first big clean energy deployment was also dismissed as a technology takeover. In 1876, a preacher warned the public that telephone wires would give people cancer and cause “galloping hydrophobia,” otherwise known as rabies. More importantly, he claimed the new technology would allow telegraph lines to connect up and spy on everyone. He also claimed that electricity was unclean, another attack that would become a common refrain by climate deniers in the coming century.

The earliest studies on resistance to renewable energy from academic institutions show that the backlash is driven by far more than inaccurate information. For example, a survey in Germany found that once the anti-wind positions had been accepted, facts and science were unlikely to persuade a change of heart. A similar pattern is confirmed by studies in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. When Americans and Britons were asked about wind, solar, and other clean energy technologies, it was not their age, gender, income, or education that predicted their answers. Instead, it was the willingness to believe that conspiracies or secret groups were behind issues such as climate change, water fluoridation, or vaccinations.

The significance of Trump’s attacks on “windmills” is that his language fits into this wider pattern. He is not spreading a new conspiracy. He is instead confirming a worldview already widely held among his political base.

Who Are They?

Carbon dioxide emissions were first linked to severe environmental change by climate scientists at least as far back as the 1950s. From the 1970s onward, however, a popular theme about the renewable energy transition was that wind and solar would allow governments to seize control. In an episode of the long-running cartoon series The Simpsons, coal magnate Mr. Burns builds a tower to block out the sun. He then forces the citizens of Springfield to buy his nuclear power. The segment was a satire, but it was also a genuine expression of the anxieties over renewables and their potential to disrupt vested interests.

Fossil fuel industry executives were not just worrying about cartoons. In 2004, Australian Prime Minister John Howard hosted a meeting of fossil fuel bosses. Calling themselves the Low Emissions Technology Advisory Group, their aim was to slow down renewables and other low carbon technologies in order to preserve the dominance of coal, oil, and gas.

Opposition to wind turbines also sprang from sources outside the fossil fuel industry. Wind farms are highly visible structures, and in countries such as the U.S., Australia, and the U.K., they have been placed in or on ridgelines or open plains where they are seen by large numbers of the public. In contrast, most people never visit a coal mine or an oil field, and nuclear power plants are strictly off-limits to most of the public.

Wind turbines have been accused of everything from causing cancer to “wind turbine syndrome,” a supposed medical condition. It was called a “non-disease” by medical experts after a high-level review of the scientific evidence. Other attacks included claims that the noise made by wind turbines poisoned water and that the turbines caused blackouts. (Renewables critic and anti-science commentator Michael Crichton was infamous for such claims.) These concerns could not simply be dismissed with facts, in part because they reflected broader anxieties about technology and change.

In the 2010s, scholars including Kevin Winter from the Technical University of Munich and his co-authors conducted an influential survey about wind turbines in Germany. They found that conspiracy beliefs “explain opposition to wind power remarkably well.” As they put it: “Political orientation, gender, age, and other socio-demographic factors have very little effect on anti-wind power sentiment” when compared to conspiracy beliefs. A similar study by Adam Corner, John Harris, and David Clarke in the U.K. found that people’s views of wind turbines and solar panels correlated with whether they thought there was a “secret government organization controlling energy and/or world resources.” Related surveys in the U.S. and Australia found that climate change denial or a belief that renewables cause cancer also predicted negative views about wind turbines and solar panels.

If someone believes that wind turbines cause cancer, just telling them that they do not cause cancer will not make any difference, at least not in the short term. As Winter and his co-authors put it: “Opposition to wind power seems to be rooted in people’s worldviews, not in misunderstandings that can be ‘clarified’ by the provision of additional information.”