President Donald Trump held a press conference ostensibly to announce a European Union trade deal. Midway through, he took a detour into familiar territory: conspiracy theories about renewables. According to Trump, wind turbines are a “con job” that makes whales “loco,” kill birds, and cause other assorted harms. The spectacle of Trump screaming at a microphone, his voice breaking into higher registers, is almost mesmerizing in its absurdity. He’s spoken about wind turbines as “windmills” before, and he is far from the only person to do so.

The real significance of Trump’s statements is that they are less soundbites than a symptom of a global trend. Renewables—especially wind turbines—have been the subject of an international conspiracy theory backlash for years.

Trump isn’t the first to cast wind turbines as technological agents of elite control. Similar claims appeared almost immediately after wind farms came into use. Both use the same underlying frame, with subtle differences. In the climate science context, it’s easy to see why both narratives might arise. Old ways of living are under threat. Wealthy elites, once propped up by fossil fuels, are attempting to maintain their power by controlling society in a new way. The different solutions offered are nostalgia for an age of coal and oil (in the U.S. and U.K.) and conspiracy theories about an alien controlling the population (in Brazil).

Evidence shows these anxieties run deep, and they’re only getting stronger. Conspiracy thinking, for example, is a much stronger predictor of anti-windfarm sentiment than demographics, level of education, or even partisan politics.

These views are also extremely resilient. Facts and figures, no matter how strong, will have limited power to shift them. People with conspiracy worldviews accept only evidence that fits within those pre-existing narratives. The wind farm controversy, and others like it, will not be solved by scientists producing more peer-reviewed research. It must be resolved at the level of values and culture, with political systems mediating the conflicts.

Wind Farms and Conspiracy Theories: The Case of Donald Trump

Wind turbine conspiracy theories are nothing new. Since at least the 1950s, climate science has told us that CO2 emissions would cause profound and imminent environmental change. But the action case was initially presented in terms of coal, oil, and gas corporations, and the need to break their power.

An early media example is a Simpsons episode where the greedy tycoon Mr. Burns builds a massive tower to block out the sun. To stay cool in the resulting heatwave, Springfield residents must purchase nuclear power. The cartoon scenario was a clear exaggeration, but it spoke to a real-world fear that vested fossil fuel interests would work actively to delay or hamper renewable energy deployment.

In fact, history shows those fears were not misplaced. In 2004, then-Australian prime minister John Howard brought fossil fuel executives together under the umbrella of the Low Emissions Technology Advisory Group. This group was charged not with finding the fastest route to decarbonization, but with delaying the growth of renewables and preserving the dominance of coal, oil, and gas.

Wind turbine conspiracies played an important role in that process. Wind farms are often visible on ridgelines or open plains, making them prominent features of the local landscape. In contrast, most coal mines, oil fields, and nuclear plants remain out of public view.

These characteristics make wind turbines an obvious target for conspiracy theorists. One early and prominent myth is “wind turbine syndrome.” This is a “non-disease” characterized by various symptoms, but which has no medical basis and was quickly debunked.

Academic research confirms that wind farm opposition is a matter of beliefs rather than demographics. Kevin Winter and his colleagues found that conspiracy thinking was a much better predictor of opposition to wind projects than age, gender, education level, or even political party. Further recent research, based on surveys across the U.S., U.K., and Australia, showed that those most likely to believe conspiracy theories—whether about climate change, government control, or energy security—are also more likely to see wind turbines as harmful.

Wind farms, as we’ve seen, are physical, large-scale symbols that wind energy is here. That’s why they are effective. For some, wind turbines symbolize the many positive things they support—progress, innovation, and climate action. For others, wind turbines are symbolic of everything that they fear: government control, a lack of personal autonomy, and a future beyond their control.

Beneath these arguments is another truth, deeper still. Fossil fuels enabled an era of prosperity. Many people do not want to accept that prosperity has negative side effects. This phenomenon of refusing to reflect on negative aspects has been described as “anti-reflexivity.” Trump’s public rhetoric and election campaign have often been rooted in a nostalgia for the age of coal, oil, and gas, and in that sense, it neatly fits this frame.

Wind turbines also have an identity politics element. For example, parts of the so-called manosphere use climate change arguments to dismiss feminism and related concerns as effeminate or a sign of weakness. For some, many of whom are white heterosexual baby boomers, the clean energy transition is a disorienting change of the guard in a world they used to feel secure in.

Renewables are not just a technological and political question but a question of culture and identity. It is for these reasons that Trump’s soundbites about “windmills” play well to his audience, as they reinforce their existing beliefs. Colorful imagery about whales, birds, and other malign effects fires the imagination and generates clicks. Fact-checking them can send some visitors scurrying to other online spaces, still clinging to those conspiracy narratives.

But underneath the rhetoric and the theatrics lies a simple, unavoidable fact: real-world opposition to renewable energy is not about the turbines. It is about the shift in power and identity they represent.