They're eating the whales… 🐳
Modern populism is a branch of the oil lobby. It's that simple.
You only have to peek past the anti-immigrant rhetoric of our new populist firebrands, people like 🇺🇸 Trump and 🇬🇧 Farage, and you find the same stench.
The stench of oil.
But what the whale? 🐳 Maybe they are environmentalists after all?
In recent weeks Trump has done so much more than railed at the scourge of windmills overlooking his golf course in Turnberry, Scotland.
He’s ramped up a vociferous war of punitive tariffs, legal aggression and permit stripping to do one thing and one thing only:
To take the wind out of the sails of renewable energy.
Now though, as if to soften the blow and add some kind of credibility to this brazenly corrupt misappropriation of the levers of state, RFK Jnr has come out in support of the whale population. Bless his organic cotton socks.
“… the fish leave the area, they’ve killed 160 whales in the last 2 years. They’re wiping out the whale population … and you [Donald] are going to save the whales of the east coast because of this.”
I have no doubt that the (already ~completed) construction of 65 massive turbine pillars is temporarily disruptive to marine life … much as the construction of a power station would disrupt the mice and cows that live in that field … but I can find no proof whatsoever that offshore wind has a net negative impact on marine life.
In fact, by restricting fishing and creating artificial reefs, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that they enhance marine biosecurity in the long run.
Oh - and they generate ~free electricity.
In the case of the almost-finished east coast project Trump’s team have halted: enough for “350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut”.
And that’s the point. 350,000 homes burn a lot of oil.
2.3 million barrels of oil per year, in fact.
That’s $150,000,000 of oil per year (or ~$450 per home).
So my question is this: do we really think that if one of Trump’s donors wanted to sink an offshore oil well in the Long Island Sound … to extract 2.3 million barrels of oil every year … that they would be so worried about the whales?
I doubt it.
Shipping, rising sea temperatures, shifting climate patterns and falling marines stocks are all contributing to the die-off of large marine animals. Earlier this year over 150 false killer whales were stranded and drowned off Tasmania due, they think, to high winds and abnormal sea swells…
… but let’s not confuse Trumps dislike for renewables as being anything but what it really is – the protection of the oil interest that put him into power.
And for those of us in Britain …
… yes, this abomination of a human being is coming for your clean, cheap energy too. Farage and Tice have “declared war” on the “the madness of net stupid zero”.
Why?
Because they work for the oil lobby.
Because, as I’ve explained before, making clean energy ~free at the point of use (which is what having solar panels on your roof kinda does) is absolutely incompatible to a vision of global socioeconomics built almost entirely around the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels.
Make no mistake people.
In Britain and America the same pattern is being played out for the same reason:
Victimise a minority and paint them as the enemy: Immigrants.
Use tech to sell your populist agenda an sieze the levers of power.
Rewrite science & the law to protect and increase oil production.
That’s it. That’s the script. That’s what we’re living through.
It is that simple.
Our society, our freedom — and the planet — are paying the price.