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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
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Trump Promises to Kill Wind Energy for Ma

(CN) - Plans for a Scotland wind farm near a site Donald Trump is eyeing for a golf course has the bloviating billionaire huffing and puffing in the U.K.'s Daily Mail.

Trump said in a recent editorial that he has instructed his lawyers to "launch an all-out challenge at the Scottish Supreme Court" against First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond. The mogul objects to plans to build an 11-turbine windfarm next to his latest development: The Trump International Golf Links, near Aberdeen.

"The First Minister's obsession with turning his nation into the Saudi Arabia of 'renewables,' as he refers to his plan for thousands of industrial windfarms, is a disgrace," Trump wrote.

He then railed against the notion that wind energy helps anyone or anything-including the environment.

"Windfarms are not only hideous, they kill birds and sea mammals, they destroy housing values, they are a danger to our health and tranquility-and it is an absolute scam to claim that they save energy," Trump wrote. "They raise electricity rates by at least four to five times. Much of England and Wales, like Scotland, is threatened by this unreliable, inefficient, discredited, obsolete technology, which continues to exist only because of enforced taxpayer subsidies. World opinion is turning against them because of the havoc they wreak."

Trump calls his latest resort an ode to his mother, whom he says was born in Scotland and "grew up speaking Gaelic" before meeting Trump's father, builder Fred C. Trump.

"I felt that I was doing something special for my mother when I bought 1,400 acres north of Aberdeen," Trump wrote. "This was in 2006. Four years later, I learned that my dream was to be the latest victim of Mad Alex's flawed ideas."

The mogul said that the European Offshore Wind Deployment Center will sit on a platform in the North Sea less than 2 miles from his resort. In fact, golfers will allegedly be able to hear "the whooshing of the blades."

"That is not a sound anyone wants to hear," Trump said.

"Each of its 11 turbines will be 65 stories high," he continued. "That's twice the height of Big Ben and eight stories higher than Trump Tower, the Manhattan building that is my corporate headquarters and the setting for my U.S. TV show, 'The Apprentice.' Because this windfarm is a 'testing facility,' each turbine will be a different color, shape and size. It will look like an industrial junkyard."

Trump's lawyers will seek a judicial review of the approval of the windfarm in the Court of Session in Edinburgh. But World Wildlife Federation Scotland director Lang Banks said in a statement the Scottish Parliament has already conducted its own inquiry into the wind farm and gave it the go-ahead.

"It's kind of sad to think that Trump has nothing better to do that use his billions to try and undermine Scotland's ambition of becoming a cleaner, greener, job creating nation," Banks said. "He may be happy wasting his own money. But defending his legal action will cost the Scottish taxpayer too. We hope the court sees through his bluff and bluster and agrees that giving the go-ahead to this development was the right decision."

Included in Trump's bluff and bluster is a scathing criticism of Salmond's role in releasing Abdelbaset al-Megrahi - the mastermind of the Pan Am 103 bombing of Lockerbie, Scotland - on humanitarian grounds. Trump says Salmond tried to get him to release a statement aimed at cooling the controversy surrounding al-Megrahi's release stateside.

"The statement was preposterous. I'm a New Yorker who lived through the September 11 attacks," Trump wrote. "I couldn't believe Salmond would ask me to sign such a letter."

Trump vows an all-out war against Salmond and wind energy - in honor of his mother's memory.

"I am going to fight him for as long as it takes - to hell if I have to - and spend as much as it takes to block this useless and grotesque blot on our heritage," Trump wrote. "By exposing the fallacy and danger of wind turbines, I will be honoring Mary MacLeod's memory in an even more important way than building the greatest golf course anywhere in the world."

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