Former President Donald Trump asserted during a Monday speech in South Carolina that offshore wind development is driving the recent spike in whale deaths along the East Coast.
Trump made the remarks about offshore wind’s possible link to the surge in baleen whale deaths along the East Coast during a campaign speech delivered at Sportsman Boats in Summerville, South Carolina, a town in the state’s “lowcountry” that relies heavily on boating for recreational and economic activity. He made the comment after ripping the Biden administration’s efforts to impose low-speed zones in large swaths of coastal Atlantic waters, a policy which advocates say will help protect whales from vessel strikes.
“You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than hitting a whale with your boat,” Trump said. “There has only been, listen to this, one such whale killed off the coast of South Carolina in the last 50 years, but on the other hand, [Biden-supported] windmills are causing whales to die in numbers never seen before. Nobody does anything about that.” (RELATED: Biden Admin To Green Light Another Massive Offshore Wind Farm Amid Industry Troubles, Mounting Whale Deaths)
Offshore wind is a key aspect of the Biden administration’s overall green energy agenda, which aims to have the U.S. power sector reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2035 and net-zero for the entire U.S. economy by 2050. The administration is striving to have offshore wind generate enough power to satisfy the demand of 10 million American homes by 2030, according to the White House.
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“You wouldn’t see it once a year, now they’re coming up on a weekly basis,” Trump continued, referring to beached whales along the East Coast. “The windmills are driving them crazy.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared “unusual mortality events” for humpback and North Atlantic right whales since 2016 and 2017, respectively, a timeline which generally coincides with the start of offshore wind farm operation off of the East Coast in 2016, according to the Department of Energy. About 200 humpback whales alone have washed up dead near or on East Coast beaches since 2016, according to Forbes.
Government agencies and many prominent environmentalist groups maintain that there is currently no available scientific evidence that proves any association between East Coast offshore wind projects and the surge in whale deaths, instead claiming that the majority of the deaths are attributable to vessel strikes and climate change. However, skeptics have theorized that underwater sonar used in the development process disorients the whales, making them much more likely to run into boats or encounter other situations that put them at risk, according to the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.
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