Why wind farms attract so much misinformation and conspiracy theory

When Donald Trump recently claimed, during what was supposed to be a press conference about a European Union trade deal, that wind turbines were a "con job" that drive whales "loco," kill birds and even people , he wasn’t just repeating old myths. He was tapping into a global pattern of conspiracy theories around renewable energy—particularly wind farms. (Trump calls them “windmills”—a climate denier trope .)

Like 19th century fears that telephones would spread diseases , wind farm conspiracy theories reflect deeper anxieties about change. They combine distrust of government, nostalgia for the fossil fuel era, and a resistance to confronting the complexities of the modern world.

And research shows that, once these fears are embedded in someone’s worldview, no amount of fact-chec