Westneat: Blowhard lacks energy to stop wind

“(Coal) is a tremendous form of energy in the sense that in a military way — think of it — coal is indestructible,” he said.

“You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the wind wheels, (mimics windmill noise, mimes shooting gun) Bing! That’s the end of that one. If the birds don’t kill it first. The birds could kill it first. They kill so many birds. You look underneath some of those windmills, it’s like a killing field, the birds.

“… And you know, don’t worry about wind, when the wind doesn’t blow, I said, ‘What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?’ Well, then we have a problem. OK good. They were putting them in areas where they didn’t have much wind, too. And it’s a subsidy — you need subsidy for windmills. You need subsidy. Who wants to have energy where you need subsidy? So, uh, the coal is doing great.”

Got that? Coal is like Trump — strong! Windmills are like liberals — weak!

Never mind that fossil fuels are subsidized, too, and also finite (unlike the wind, which will blow forever). But it’s beyond alarming that here we sit, with the West on fire again and temperatures rising, and this is the juvenile state of the energy debate issuing down from the top.

So I was heartened to see there are some counter-stirrings coming up from the bottom — including in redder parts of the state and nation.

On Monday, the Spokane City Council passed an ordinance calling for that city of 215,000 to be powered by 100 percent clean, renewable energy by the year 2030.

Whatcom County, represented at the state legislative level solely by Republicans, also voted recently to push toward 100 percent renewable energy.

The top five states most dependent on wind energy are all red states. Kansas, for instance, gets 36 percent of its total electricity from the windmills Trump is mocking.

I bring all this up because of how Trump demagogues everything, sowing division even where it doesn’t exist. But a movement from below — one bubbling in both red areas and blue — isn’t one he’s likely to have the attention span to stop.