Donald Trump continuously warns that wind generators are killing birds. Final night time in Wisconsin, he raised a brand new and reverse concern: They’re resulting in fewer hogs being killed.
At a town-hall occasion, a younger man requested the previous president about the price of meat, and he replied with a meandering reply that by some means linked wind farms to a lower in bacon consumption. As with numerous Trump quotations, it’s important to learn or watch it at full size to even try to comply with it.
“Groceries, meals has gone up at ranges that no person’s ever seen earlier than. We’ve by no means seen something prefer it—50, 60, 70 %,” he mentioned. “You check out bacon and a few of these merchandise and a few individuals don’t eat bacon anymore. We’re going to get the power costs down. Once we get power down, you already know, this was brought on by their horrible power—wind, they need wind in all places. However when it doesn’t blow we have now just a little drawback. This was brought on by power. This was actually brought on by power, and in addition their unbelievable spending. They’re spending us out of wealth, really, they’re taking our wealth away, but it surely was brought on by power.”
When you break it down into element elements, it’s not fairly as erratic, but it surely’s nonetheless nonsensical. Trump is saying that the Biden administration has pushed for an growth of wind energy. That has, in his view, pushed inflation, which has made grocery costs increased and compelled cost-conscious buyers to chop down on consuming bacon.
That’s considerably coherent, as a principle. The issue is that almost none of it’s true.
Right here’s what’s proper: Biden has pushed to broaden wind energy. In actual fact, U.S. manufacturing of each power class besides coal is at a file excessive. Bacon costs have additionally risen for the reason that begin of the Biden administration, a part of broader inflation over the previous few years.
However little proof connects these items. Better wind manufacturing ought to drive down total power prices—increased gasoline costs, which shoppers observe carefully, however. (Trump is correct that generators don’t flip when the wind doesn’t blow, although different power sources live on.) Biden’s massive push for wind got here within the Inflation Discount Act, and though that legislation was improperly (and cynically) named, it additionally doesn’t appear to have produced inflation. Particularly, bacon costs are decrease than they had been when it was handed.
Who is aware of the place Trump got here up with the bacon instance, which he has talked about within the context of inflation earlier than. He affords no specifics, and it has the ring of his doubtful “sir” tales. Economists have noticed that bacon is sufficiently beloved that demand for it stays pretty steady, even when costs rise. Grocery costs have risen nowhere close to 50 % total.
(One irony is that many environmentalists who again renewable power would possibly nicely cheer if wind energy did produce a discount in bacon consumption. Meat manufacturing, and particularly the large farms that produce a lot of the pork that Individuals devour, is soiled and extremely polluting.)
Trump’s riff is an instance of the remarkably convoluted approach that he phrases many statements. You may often kind of comply with the place he’s going, however determining the small print requires painstaking parsing—particularly when the underlying claims are off base. For a person who hates wind energy a lot, Trump positive produces numerous sizzling air.
