Nearly all of President Barack H. Obama's "accomplishments" have been nullified by his physically and intellectually superior successor, Donald J. Trump. But while Obama's so-called legacy has been largely erased, majestic birds continue to suffer as a result of his bloodthirsty obsession with wind turbines.
The Obama administration, in the name of "climate justice," bent over backwards to install massive turbine farms across the country. As Obama's spinning death machines systematically dismembered countless bald eagles and other protected species, in what some have argued amounts to genocide, the Democratic administration granted waivers to exempt wind farms from federal laws prohibiting the murder of endangered birds. The slaughter continued.
Many have argued that, when it comes Obama's insatiable lust for bird flesh, the cruelty is the point. A recent Bloomberg report substantiates this assessment. Turns out the wind turbines aren't as environmentally sustainable as advertised. The massive fiberglass blades—some as long as football fields—need to be replaced after several years but can't easily be recycled or even transported. As a result, they're starting to pile up like the discarded corpses of murdered birds in landfills across the country, where they'll remain "forever," in the words of one expert:
Tens of thousands of aging blades are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills. In the U.S. alone, about 8,000 will be removed in each of the next four years. Europe, which has been dealing with the problem longer, has about 3,800 coming down annually through at least 2022, according to BloombergNEF. It's going to get worse: Most were built more than a decade ago, when installations were less than a fifth of what they are now.
Again, the cruelty is the point. Obama didn't coddle the wind industry because he wanted to save the planet. He did it because he wanted to eliminate the most uniquely American creatures on this earth by putting guillotines in their flight path. And he almost succeeded. Time will tell if President Trump has the backbone to deliver justice for America's heroic birds.