Workers are sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump’s decades-spanning hatred of wind turbines, per The Guardian, warning that his crusade against wind energy is destroying jobs.
Trump has long expressed disdain for wind turbines — referring to them as “windmills” — with his antipathy appearing to stem from a group of them being installed off the coast of his golf course in Scotland. Since returning to the White House, he has renewed his campaign against them, issuing an executive order to try and halt wind energy construction, and paying billions to convince comapnies to stop their turbine projects.
In a Monday morning report, The Guardian detailed how “hundreds” of workers have lost their jobs due to Trump’s anti-wind crusade, speaking with various sources in the industry. Thomas Kilday, a furnace electrician with IBEW Local 99 in Rhode Island, told the outlet that he was in the midst of a four-week turbine-build project for the Revolution Wind Project in the Atlantic Ocean when the company was hit with a stop-work order from the federal government.
“No one really knew what was going on. We didn’t know what it meant for us. We just knew that everything was up in the air,” Kilday explained. “You plan your whole life around being gone for 28 days, and to come out here and have it thrown up in the air, worrying what does this mean for me, for my pay for the next four weeks, what’s going to happen? There’s a lot of uncertainty.”
After a court blocked that initial order, the Trump administration issued another stop-work order against the project in December.
“That was really difficult,” Kilday continued. “I just spent a bunch of money on Christmas gifts for my family, and it was not what I wanted to be thinking about. Six months out of the year we’re away from home, and for what little time we do have at home, not to be able to spend just focus all of that time and energy on our families, it’s tough. It’s not a great feeling to be worried about your job when you’re supposed to be home.”
He continued: “We’re proud of the work that we do out here, and we want to be able to continue to do it. We think it’s important work. When I’m at home, and I drive down my street, I look up at those power lines. I helped create the power that’s running through those power lines, and I’m proud of that.”
Trump’s bid to buy out wind turbine contracts came after his administration backed efforts to enforce his initial executive order. So far, the government has paid out around $2.6 billion to energy companies as part of this crusade, with Pat Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, telling The Guardian that the plot is not only damaging for the environment, but also for American jobs.
“I think it’s a foolish policy that the Trump administration is engaging in trying to buy out these leases,” Crowlay said. “These projects are not only helping to reduce our carbon emissions, they’re providing good-paying union jobs for thousands.”