An Ill Wind From Aberdeen Blows Donald Trump No Good

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A Great Spot For The Condos
A Great Spot For The Condos

Donald Trump is upset with the possibility of the construction of a wind farm off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland where he is in the process of building another of his splashy monuments to ostentation.

“When I saw this piece of land I was overwhelmed by the imposing dunes and rugged Aberdeenshire coastline. I knew that this was the perfect site for Trump International – Scotland. I have never seen such an unspoiled and dramatic sea side landscape and the location makes it perfect for our development. Our site is close to two of the world’s most famous courses and is just 15 minutes by car from Aberdeen Airport.” – Donald Trump from the Trump International National Golf Links Website

I’ve seen unspoiled coastlines from the Carolinas to California’s Big Sur, from Mendocino to Puerto Rico. I’ve walked pristine beaches in Mexico and Vietnam but nowhere while strolling the clean wet sand of a peaceful tide line or hiking the powdery dunes, enjoying an onshore breeze, have I ever had a lustful vision of development, of neon and glitz, and billboards with my name in six foot letters.

I suppose I’m just not a visionary like the Donald.

Whether in Scotland or Atlantic City, Baja or Florida, Trump looks at the beauty of a seascape and sees dollar signs, fat cat golfers in plaid shorts hitting mashies on professionally landscaped fairways or rolling putts across carefully manicured greens. The Trump vision is of gamblers smoking cigars and casually tossing big money around a casino. He calls himself an environmentalist but the only green in his vision are the baize covered tables, and the money.

Where you or I might hear the rolling surf driven by a misting breeze and the warning calls of distant gulls he hears the chiming electronic chaos of a thousand slot machines, a hellish din to us, a symphony to the huckster’s ears.

Trump, the environmentalist also has a different vision of how to provide energy to the people of Aberdeen and to his billion pound development.

“I am very disappointed that Scotland may allow the development of a wind power plant directly off Aberdeen’s beautiful coastline.” – Donald Trump

How he proposes to heat and cool his hotel rooms, his vacation villas, and recharge his golf carts he hasn’t said. I suppose he’d prefer a coal fired power plant or offshore oil rigs, far out of sight of the sensitive eyes of his wealthy customers, in someone else’s view.

While building his golf and vacation monstrosity in Aberdeen’s backyard in the middle of their view of the North Sea, Trump doesn’t want a wind farm in his back yard, on the horizon of his view of the same sea. NIMBY squared?

I’m sure the Donald is unbothered by Texas City vistas for the rest of us, thousands of oil rigs strung like beads on land and sea. He may not notice that they’ve calmly crammed coal fired power plants up against our suburbs, blithely sheared the tops off our mountains, planted fission reactors on our fault lines, polluted our air and water, ruined our health, and wrecked our dreams.

His ability to ignore these and other horrors makes him a man who can call himself an environmentalist with one side of his mouth and have the audacity to complain about the sight of windmills on the horizon of his vacation view with the other.

I hope the people of Scotland ignore the self serving bleating of this little carnival barker and successfully harvest uncountable trillions of watts of safe, clean wind power from the North Sea. I’d like to visit some day and sit on the beach, watching the gulls soar above the windmills as they slowly turn in the distance.

Photo: By Pessimist (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


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