by Vijay Jayaraj
Last year, the New York Times ran “50 States, 50 Fixes,” a sprawling series of articles purporting to offer solutions to environmental, especially climate, challenges across America. Writing for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, I’m challenging that series, one by one, demonstrating that many of the supposed environmental fixes cause their own environmental problems.
The article focusing on Illinois lamented the tragic deaths of birds colliding with McCormick Place and other high-rise buildings in Chicago.
The emotive article painted a grim picture of avian mortality in the concrete jungle. The concern for these creatures seems noble. Who among us does not grieve the loss of God’s creation? Yet this empathy exposes a rot at the heart of the modern environmental movement.
While the Times wrings its hands over glass facades in Chicago, it has spent two decades cheering for an industry that slices eagles and other birds, and bats, out of the sky with industrial efficiency. The newspaper of record is not merely inconsistent; it is complicit in a global slaughter. It demonizes skyscrapers while canonizing wind turbines—machines that have turned our skies into killing fields for the very species the author claims to cherish.
The Wind Industry’s License to Kill
The American Bird Conservancy estimates that wind turbines kill between 700,000 and one million birds annually in the United States alone. Yet the industry is often granted quotas, i.e. literal licenses to kill. The matter is more concerning when these turbines are given a free hand in slaughtering species that are under concern or endangered, as acknowledged by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s largest, most diverse environmental network.
How does this happen? The enormous size of industrial wind turbines can be deceptive. At optimal speeds to generate electricity, about 10 to 20 revolutions per minute, their blades look as if they’re turning slowly. But their tips are moving at 180 to 200 miles per hour—too fast for birds to avoid.
Consider the iconic American golden eagle, a species of high conservation concern. From 2013 to 2024, golden eagle mortalities from wind turbines more than doubled, rising from 110 to 270 annually.
In 2022, ESI Energy, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges after its turbines killed at least 150 eagles. Most of these majestic birds were hacked apart by turbine blades. The company agreed to spend up to $27 million on measures to prevent further deaths, but only after being forced by the courts.
They are not alone. Duke Energy pleaded guilty to killing 14 golden eagles and was forced to pay fines. PacifiCorp was fined $2.5 million for 38 golden eagle deaths. These are not isolated accidents. They are the cost of doing business in the green economy.
Researchers warn that if the current growth rate of the wind industry continues, it will have devastating implications for raptor populations. The hazardous volume for these birds in lower- and higher-risk zones increased by 198 percent and 119 percent, respectively, over the same period.
A systematic review of 84 peer-reviewed onshore wind studies, covering 160 specific cases, reveals a catastrophic disruption of wildlife. Published in Biological Conservation, the study reports displacement in most cases: 63 percent of bird populations, 72 percent of bats, and 67 percent of mammals were driven from their habitats. Some species were displaced up to several kilometres from the turbines.
A 2025 study reveals that “Wind and solar farms overlap with the distribution ranges of 2,310 threatened amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles, accounting for 36.3% of the world’s 6,362 threatened vertebrate species.”
Why weep for a sparrow hitting a window in Chicago but ignore the eagle severed by a blade in Wyoming or the 6,362 species endangered by renewable energy sources?
The answer, surprisingly, lies in theology. Modern environmentalism has become a secular religion. In this worldview, “Climate Change” is the original sin, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the demon. To exorcise this demon, the alarmists demand sacrifices. They are willing to offer up the very wildlife they claim to love at the altar of renewable energy. This is idolatry.
But here’s the truth: Since the 1800s, our planet has gotten a lot greener! Mild warming combined with higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has boosted plant growth and leaf cover across huge areas of the Earth. Crop yields have broken records. Deserts are shrinking. The very CO2 they blame has helped the birds thrive.
Yet the Times and their ilk reject this truth. They prefer a narrative of doom. They push for unreliable wind energy that destabilizes grids, raises electricity prices for the poor, and slaughters millions of birds and bats. They call this “saving the planet.” I call it a lie.
They will never question the wind industry, because that industry is the sacrament of their false climate religion.
We must reject this hypocrisy. True stewardship means looking at the data without ideological blinders. It means acknowledging that wind turbines are apex predators of the sky. It means admitting that the push for “Net Zero” is causing real, tangible harm to biodiversity.
Don’t get me wrong, the Chicago birds deserve attention. So do the birds being murdered around the world. Moral consistency demands faithfulness in both cases. Until the Times confronts that inconsistency, its environmental concern remains performative.
Vijay Jayaraj is Research Associate for Developing Countries with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition. He holds a M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, postgraduate degree in Energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a B.S. in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research assistant at University of British Columbia’s Changing Oceans Research Unit in Canada.
One of the biggest defenses put forth by wind advocates is that wind turbines kill less than 2% of annual bird deaths per year. Further that bird deaths flying into buildings is 5x-10x more than wind turbine deaths and bird deaths by cat kills is 5x-10x more than turbine bird deaths
What is omitted is that
A – buildings occupy 100,000x more space than wind turbines yet deaths per capita chopped by wind turbines is 1000x
B – bird deaths flying into buildings are old and sick vs healthy birds
C – Cats eating birds are part of the natural food cycle.
All which hide the avoidable bird deaths.
Few if any, of the birds that are killed by buildings, cars and cats are endangered.
Many if not most of the birds being killed by windmills are.
Beyond that, windmills are going up a lot faster than new buildings are.
Yes. Cats aren’t eating eagles, hawks, condors…
Wow it’s almost as if buildings, which cause a lot of bird deaths, have over 100K x the size of, ahem , “clean, renewable wind power,” and have more than 100,000 x more important to the population than lives in them, not to mention their rich history and inspiring architecture. Windmills, in addition to creating eyesore’s wherever they appear, and to make matters worse they are simply useless at scale.
Yeah but while those tall downtown buildings look full during the work day, a lot of them are empty and useless all night!! Renewable energy is, um, ah… never mind.
Touché! In fact so many CRE units were destroyed by covid and remote work that it has become a drag on many cities’ downtown areas. City and state leaders should be able to resolve the CRE/housing mismatch with the right policies. None have, to my knowledge
Let us also note that many people live and work in skyscrapers, whereas wind turbines represent a terrifying financial and environmental cost for a negligible energy return.
Regarding your point C, I’m of the opinion that domestic cats should be kept indoors—less to protect birds or mice than to prevent our felines from being run over, poisoned, or trapped in places they can’t escape from. And if we can avoid a bird’s nest being emptied of its brood by the appetites of a well-fed house cat (fed quality food, not vegan pâté or kibble, please), who might regurgitate its meal on the living room carpet an hour later, so much the better.
One question I’ve been wondering about for some time: do feral cats sadistically toy with their prey the way domestic cats do? In the wild, the old saying “don’t play with your food” really takes on its full meaning.
Finally: it’s obvious that an alley cat isn’t going to take on a golden eagle or a common buzzard. If the cat isn’t too big, it might even be one of those aforementioned birds of prey that makes short work of it.
And ….
“The Cooper’s Hawk, a dynamic presence in Kansas, thrives on a diet rich in variety, predominantly targeting medium-sized birds and small mammals.”
bet they eat tons more birds than cats do ….
It’s definitely possible! But wild animals only eat what they need, and what offers a good ratio of energy expenditure / nutrient intake.
I sometimes see, in the early morning, the neighbors’ cat slipping into the vegetation in my garden. He arrives, catches a bird or a mouse, returns home, and then comes back, about an hour later, to have another bite to eat.
I suspect that domestic cats kill for fun, as long as they are well fed by their owners. Which doesn’t make them bad animals, just animals that are better to keep at home — for the reasons I mentioned above, rather than to preserve the numbers of tits and mice. I don’t want either of my two cats to run under the wheels of a car, or get poisoned, or hurt/killed by a larger beast.
And they are not just in Ks ….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper's_hawk
Seems that lots of domestic cats in MA are being eaten by coyotes. Even in dense urban ‘hoods.
Well, in France we don’t have any coyotes, so on that side, the cats are quiet! The most ferocious beast in nature must be the lynx. Finally, on the feline side. There are also brown bears in the Pyrenees. But I don’t know if they are interested in cats.
That coyotes enter cities does not surprise me. If they eat cats, they have to tear open trash cans too, I guess.
In the French countryside, we are starting to worry about raccoons, which are extremely resourceful and not necessarily very friendly.
The worst thing about raccoons is that about every decade or so, a rabies epidemic will sweep through their population. I don’t know why, but those things are especially susceptible. I have lived in two cities where there were rabies epizootics in raccoons.
Don’t let anyone convince you that raccoons can be domesticated because someone decided they are cute. They are wild animals, and even when not rabid they can be very aggressive. When I see them on my land, I shoot them. Keep tight lids on your garbage cans, and do NOT feed them.
France is free of rabies in non-flying terrestrial mammals (all mammals except bats) since 2001, but if I were bitten by a wild animal, I would still go get vaccinated. I take careful note of the information you’ve given me about raccoons and their susceptibility to rabies.
One might indeed get the impression that they are big stuffed animals just waiting for cuddles and affection. That’s nature’s deceptive side for people who aren’t aware that wildlife is not “nice.” The fact that a raccoon can be aggressive does not surprise me at all. That it is opportunistic surprises me even less. If you feed it, it simply thinks it has found a good address! You are right to protect yourself against these animals and the dangers they represent. In addition to bites and scratches, possible property damage, and the transmission of rabies, raccoons carry extremely dangerous parasites. Squirrels also transmit very dangerous diseases, and they are not as friendly as one might think.
I went to Chicago with my parents about fifteen years ago. I was a child, and I was fascinated to see practically a squirrel at every street corner. That is relatively rare in Western Europe. I remember looking up at some branches where I heard an animal screaming. There, I saw a squirrel staring at me, panting. The screams were coming from it. My parents urged me to come back to them. I ran toward them, and later I told myself that if I had waited perhaps five seconds longer, the charming little creature would have leapt at me to slash my face. Nature is not our friend, and there is really no reason to regard it with the slightest new-age animist condescension, or whatever you want to call it.
If you are able to shoot raccoons freely, I imagine they are not a protected species? I have a stone marten in the attic of my house. Although protected, the stone marten is a very common species. I should call a specialist before it starts chewing on the electrical cables. I do have a circuit breaker, of course, but I would rather not risk the house burning down if a late-night craving drives this roommate to gnaw on the wiring insulation.
In any case, thank you for your wise advice. I truly appreciate it and thank you warmly.
Squirrels are okay. Every squirrel? No, but we probably have a billion of them, and if they weren’t okay I think we’d know by now. Most of the vermin are only irritating, and that includes the raccoons except when they are foaming at the mouth, making weird sounds, and trying to get inside the house.
As for shooting them, well, we live in the western countryside. In our elongated neighborhood, at least 80% of homeowners are armed. The state capital is 200 miles away. Trust me, even if they tried to make it illegal to shoot raccoons, good luck trying to enforce it.
I understand that France is highly regulated. We are too, but not to that degree. And then there are the deer and the wolves and the cougars. There’s a phrase out here: “shoot, shovel, shut up.” Here in the American West, we pretty much do as we please.
By the way, the classic American cookbook, Joy of Cooking, has recipes for squirrel and raccoon. Haven’t done it myself, but squirrel pie was a common item 75 years ago and before that.
By the way, I have traveled to 26 countries including 5 times to France. Mostly but not entirely Paris. France is tied for #1 with Scotland and Japan. Why? Food and manners. I could be the French Tourist Authority in America. From what I have read, living there is another matter, but it sure as hell has been a great place to visit.
In response to your penultimate comment: my great-grandfather used to do a bit of hunting. He would bring back squirrels that he then cooked. I’m sure they can taste very good. Raccoon too… Fricasseed or slow-cooked, why not!
I’m very happy that you like France and that you rank it alongside Scotland and Japan! Paris is a very beautiful city, but it has lost some of its prestige over time. Years of left-wing and “woke” leadership have made it almost unrecognizable for many conservatives. The French countryside can be very beautiful as well. And sometimes very depressing (eastern France, where I’m from, is full of small towns that have fallen into ruin since the steel industry collapsed in the 1970s. What remain are the long silhouettes of blast furnaces against the landscape…)
Living in France is probably not so bad, as long as you have enough money to eat properly and heat your home, and you don’t hang around in the “wrong” neighborhoods at “dangerous” hours. (That is to say: the suburbs late at night.) I don’t know when your last trip to Paris was, but if it was fairly recent, I’m glad you didn’t have any unpleasant experience that gave you a bad impression of my country.
That’s the thing about traveling: visiting vs living there. I’ve driven 500,000+ road trip miles in all 50 states, Mexico, and a few Canadian provinces, and have driven a few thousand miles in the U.K., France, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Czech. Been to plenty of places that I liked but would never want to live in.
Even if I spoke more than 15 words of French, I wouldn’t want to live there. In fact, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but the U.S., and I don’t say that with any jingoistic intent. And I could make a long list of places here that I would never want to visit again, much less live in.
But France as a visitor? If you know just a few local customs, it’s fantastic, or at least it always has been for me. Last visit was 2013 to Paris, and unlike the other times, I wore what I wear at home: rancher clothes. In ’13, I decided not only to not hide being American but to go the other way: Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, snap-button Western shirts, closed-face belt buckle like in rodeos.
Now, I was NOT loud or obnoxious. And I knew my words: bon jour, bon soir, au revoir, merci, and my rescue phrase: “Desolee, je ne parl pas Francais. Si vous plait, parlez vous Anglais?” Humbly said. So on an earlier trip to Paris, one evening I walked to a small shop that sold take-out food. You don’t go into one of those unless you’re there to buy. Looking is what windows are for.
I walk in. “Bon jour,” I said, not yet having learned “bon soir.”
“Ah, you’re American,” the woman replies, in English. “You’re just here to look.”
“Yes, I am American,” I replied, “and I am here to buy dinner.”
The lightbulb turned on. It was a beautiful friendship, if temporary.
I have all kinds of Paris stories. Have loved the place.
Anyhow, stay away from the raccoons. Deceptive, nasty things. A lot of them aren’t even cute, but filthy. The only things worse than raccoons are rats and pit bull dogs. LOL
I got a long, deep scratch in my arm while freeing a racoon who had its head stuck in our squirrel feeder. A couple of days later, I began to experience flu like symptoms, at a time no flu was going around. I wondered if there was a connection, and researched racoons and rabies. Where we live in northern Virginia, there are reported 1,500 rabid racoons a year. Then I read about rabies. About 50,000 people die of it every year, and in recorded medical history, there have been only nine people who have survived it. I almost waited too long before getting the vaccine series, which is accompanied by human rabies antibody injections. Though the flu-like symptoms disappeared within 12 hours, it took me a year to recover from the mental fog resulting from the infection. Don’t screw around with contact with raccoons. It is deadly serious.
Same thing goes for deer. Walt Disney made Bambi a star, but a lot more Americans are killed by deer than by any other wild animal. Bears get the publicity, but deer do the damage.
They carry ticks, which carry more nasty diseases than I will ever know about, and their horns (if they’re bucks) are extremely dangerous. Bacteria. I know someone who died by having a deer’s scratch and infect him. I know someone else who was crippled by Lyme disease spread by deer ticks, and another who was seriously impacted by alpha-gal syndrome spread by deer ticks. You don’t think of these things until you see them.
It’s not that I hate wild animals, but I never imagine for a second that they are our cartoon friends.
Agree. We have a cat and multiple
bait stationsbird feeders. We do lose a a few of birds to window collisions and the cat’s hunting skills. Almost all are common and abundant small birds – juncos, chickadees, sparrows, finches, blackbirds, etc. No doubt the several hundreds of pounds of seed we feed them helps to keep their populations up. There is no noticeable impact on the populations of these birds. We have never found a dead eagle, hawk, owl, seagull or vulture. Our cat seems to recognize an eagle’s shadow and hides when one is around.It’s appalling that we tolerate, just for the generation of occasional electricity under favorable weather conditions:
The American Bird Conservancy estimates that wind turbines kill between 700,000 and one million birds annually in the United States alone.
The American Bird Conservancy figures for bird deaths are ridiculously low. There are 75 thousand wind turbines in the USA. They are claiming that wind turbines kill ten birds each per year. The true figure is 500. This means that 37 million birds are killed by wind turbines every year in the USA.
This link shows bird mortality per turbine in various countries.
Spain: 333-1000 birds/bats per year.
Germany: 309 birds per year.
Sweden: 895 birds per year.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230331030649/https://windmillskill.com/blog/spanish-wind-farms-kill-6-18-million-birds-bats-year
Whatever number of eagle deaths they are reporting, the ACTUAL numbers are much higher!
Coyotes are the most efficient scavenger in my area. If you dropped a freshly-killed or wounded eagle right in front of them, they would not eat it out in the open. They would take it to the nearest piece of cover, and dine just within the edge where they can eat in peace but still keep an eye out for trouble.
Typically all that is left is a giant pile of feathers. Do the mortality counters include the bird remains that are in a thicket a 150 yards away from the base of the turbine?
The penalties listed are not for killing eagles they are for killing eagles without a permit from FWS. The real crime is that the permits are bogus. FWS claims to have an offset program where for every golden eagle killed by wind an amazing 1.2 are saved from power line electrocution. This is wildly false as explained in my report: http://www.cfact.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Wojick-Eagle-Kill-Report-Final.pdf
FWS is assuming a life saving rate that is 1000 times what is possible. I have pointed this out to them repeatedly but the ignore me.
Good one, David. The “offsets” are just a fig leaf to justify incidental take permits to allow legal killing of protected species.
Trump says he doesn’t want any windmills built while he is president.
I am somewhat skeptical, but persuadable. Funny how that works. Critical thinking, right?
I am skeptical because I live near the Columbia River Gorge, which divides about 160 miles of Oregon and Washington. A bit more than 100 miles of the Gorge, and other land south of there in Oregon, is full of wind turbines. The region is raptor central: bald and golden eagles, vultures, hawks, and owls, among others.
I have wandered into wind turbine fields, and have not seen a single dead raptor or any other dead bird. I am persuadable because I wasn’t looking for dead birds. One of these years I’ll do it again, accompanied by someone with more experience than me. Facts and observation count a lot more with me than statements by interested parties.
Past that, I think about what happened to moths in England when they switched from coal to natural gas to heat most buildings. The moths that were black became white. Same species. They’d originally been white, then evolved to be black because of the coal smoke in the air, then evolved again. This is what I’d expect from birds, bats, and wind turbines.
I need to say that I truly despise the turbines. I have other reasons, just not the bird issue.
I’m baffled by your suggestion.You expect bats and birds to evolve in the presence of turbines to evolve in some way to be safe in the presence of turbines?
I will keep reciting this statistic until someone listens. A research acquaintance, who has studied eagles for probably five decades both with the FWS and as a contractor to them lists causes of Golden eagle deaths he finds while wandering in fields of turbines thusly: Eagle deaths by turbine blade strikes is nearly one-half. It exceeds deaths by automobiles, electrocution on power lines (which are increased greatly by placement of wind plants), and rifle shots combined. It is three times the number of deaths from battles with Bald eagles.
The increase in mortality by a factor of at least two is not made up for by phony offsets, take permits, and the like. Note how the Biden Administration relaxed the treatment of violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 for the wind industry. Now if there weren’t any issue why would they engage in this many years process?
As I noted, one of these years I will find someone around here to talk to about bird deaths in our wind turbine fields, and then go out and have a closer look. I am much more open minded than your comment seems to suggest.