The Trump administration has often opposed clean energy. One of its arguments is that clean energy displaces American jobs, yet the Department of Energy reported that clean energy jobs grew twice as fast as the U.S. employment rate in 2023.
Another argument from the administration is that the wind energy sector is a danger to wildlife, especially whales and birds. The official White House account and the DOE shared a photo on the social platform X of a bald eagle "hurt" by a wind turbine. The photo has been proved to be doctored, as reported and researched by AFP Fact Check.
The photo was taken in Israel in 2017, published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and credited to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The bird was also stated to be a kestrel, a type of falcon, not a bald eagle.
One of the most obvious clues to the photo's origins is the Hebrew writing on the wind turbine. Ornithologists who consulted with AFP have also agreed that the bird does not have the standard size and coloring of a bald eagle.
"It is a small falcon based on bill structure, and the barred plumage fits Eurasian kestrel best," Ben Sheldon, a professor of ornithology at the University of Oxford, wrote to AFP.
It is true that hundreds of thousands of birds die from collisions with wind turbines in the U.S. every year, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, these fatalities "represent a tiny fraction of the birds killed annually in other ways, such as flying into buildings," Sheldon said.
Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, reaffirmed these facts, adding that wind turbines only account for 0.002% to 0.028% of all bird deaths.
It's necessary to transition to clean energy not only because fossil fuels are a finite resource, but also because they harm the land, wildlife, and humans. Mining strips land and takes habitats away from animals and Indigenous people, and fossil fuels cause an immense amount of air and water pollution, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The Trump administration is still pausing many wind projects due to false claims; however, transitioning to clean energy is more beneficial to birds than continuing to use fossil fuels.
Jacobson said, per AFP: "Coal and fossil-gas electricity-generating plants also kill more birds per unit of energy and in total than do wind turbines."
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