Wind energy and birds: Can’t have one without decapitating the other, apparently! That’s more or less the shared position of two prominent American egomaniacs, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and author Jonathan Franzen.
Never mind that coal and oil have a worse track record when it comes to avian death. But what are the nuances of each man’s position on the ever-present conflict between turbines and tanagers? Can you identify them?
See if you can correctly attribute the quotes below! Answers after the jump.
A) “The wind kills all your birds. All your birds, killed. You know, the environmentalists never talk about that.”
B) “And so I came to feel miserably conflicted about climate change … What were the eagles and the condors killed by wind turbines compared with the impact of rising sea levels on poor nations? What were the endemic cloud-forest birds of the Andes compared with the atmospheric benefits of Andean hydroelectric projects?”
C) “… If you go to various places in California, wind is killing all of the eagles. If you shoot an eagle, they want to put you in jail for five years. And yet the winds are killing hundreds and hundreds of eagles, one of the most beautiful, treasured birds and they’re killing them by the hundreds and nothing happens. Wind is a problem.”
D) “When I started watching birds, and worrying about their welfare, I became attracted to a countervailing strain of Christianity, inspired by St. Francis of Assisi’s example of loving what’s concrete and vulnerable and right in front of us … Even the most ominously degraded landscape could make me happy if it had birds in it.”
E) “Like a bird, like a bird, like a bird, like a bird, we fly away. Like a bird, like a bird, like a bird, like a bird, see those sunny days. Like a bird, like a bird, like a bird, like a bird, so hide away. Like a bird, like a bird, like a bird, like a bird, I need to escape this place.”
ANSWERS:
Tiffany Trump, Donald Trump’s youngest daughter: E