The minke whale that washed up alive but too ill for rescue on a beach in New Jersey last week was the seventh whale to become stranded on New Jersey beaches this year. Last year, there were twice that many—part of a large number of humpback, right, and minke whale deaths up and down the East Coast in the past seven years, which some have spuriously blamed on offshore wind.
This whale’s death comes at an interesting time: Only a few weeks ago, researchers from Brown University published a new paper tracing the extensive links between offshore wind opponents, who have cast themselves as whale defenders, and the fossil fuel industry. The misinformation that “wind kills whales” hasn’t only been repeated by politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump, or by Fox News—though these right-wingers are saying it a lot. Local wind project opponents, some of whom appear to have environmental values and commitments, have also made this argument in recent years.
“Beyond Dark Money,” published in Energy and Social Science in November, clarified the complicated status of these groups, which aren’t simply astroturf fronts for corporate interests; nor are they purely grassroots efforts. The researchers found that groups in southern New England opposing offshore wind were supported extensively by what the researchers called “information subsidies” from the fossil fuel industry. That means that the industry and its think tanks provide the groups with false narratives, misleading facts, and fake experts. These relationships have helped broaden the coalition opposing wind energy to include people concerned about the environment and many other citizens who wouldn’t normally find common ground with the fossil fuel industry.
“Wind power kills whales” is one of the fake stories generated by this network. One of the groups mentioned in the report, Save Right Whales, founded in 2021, warns on its home page, “They survived whaling, but right whales won’t survive wind energy.” On its home page, Save Right Whales doesn’t mention any threat to whales other than wind energy.
Yet there isn’t even a grain of truth to the alleged wind-whale connection: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the increase in whale deaths has a number of other causes, mainly an increase in collisions with boats and entanglement in fishing nets. Ironically, this problem stems from two key players in the anti-wind coalition mapped by this new study: the fishing industry and, of course, the fossil fuel industry itself. Some of these problems are related to climate change; some whales are feeding closer to shore as the warming of the ocean has led to changes in their food sources, putting them perilously close to human activities that can harm them.
Plastics are also a cause of whale death—another one that the fossil fuel industry doesn’t want us to talk about. Last year, a young cuvier beaked whale died in the Philippines with nearly 90 pounds of plastic in its stomach, National Geographic reported. The poor guy had starved to death because his stomach was so full of plastic that there was no room for food. Infectious diseases—apparently the cause of death for the minke whale who met her end in Cape May this week—are also a factor.
The tragic whale beachings in these heavily populated areas are also related to another, largely positive development: Because of federal environmental laws enacted in the 1970s, and because of endangered species protections put in place by the Obama administration, many waterways closer to shore—like New York Harbor, where I recently saw humpback whales and hundreds of dolphins within plain view of the city skyline—have become more inviting to whales and other marine wildlife. As one scientist noted, where there are more whales, we see more strandings; it can be bad news for the individual but good news for the population. The fossil fuel industry probably doesn’t want to talk about the role of regulation in allowing whales to thrive in places that were previously too polluted.
The false whale death narrative is not the only strange argument against wind power emerging from this fossil fuel–supplied network, according to the Brown researchers. This network of individuals and groups also fans concerns about offshore turbines’ potential impact on phytoplankton, which is minor compared to the impacts of warming oceans on all marine life. In a typical example, a group called Green Oceans, using the language and vibe of environmental panic, asks in a PowerPoint presentation, “Are we destroying something that is irreplaceable?” Warning about the “industrialization” of the ocean, Green Oceans notes ominously that the impact on phytoplankton is an “unknown.” And they claim that wind power causes carbon emissions. It does emit some carbon—a tiny fraction of that emitted by fossil fuels. The mining impacts of fossil fuels are about five hundred times greater than those of renewable energy technologies.
The groups also rely on fossil fuel industry propaganda for rhetoric about solutions, emphasizing natural gas (whose carbon impacts are significant) and nuclear fusion (which could be a good alternative but cannot possibly provide energy at the scale needed to decarbonize right now, which is the needed time frame).
The cooperation between the fossil fuel industry and the grassroots suggests that the anti-wind movement is more than astroturf, but also more than simple-minded, provincial Nimbyism. While the fossil fuel industry has money, it doesn’t have moral credibility, nor does it typically have roots in communities like those on the East Coast, far away from actual extraction or refinery sites. Groups genuinely concerned with whales and oceans do have that moral credibility and community grounding. The Brown University study suggests that environmentalists supporting renewable energy will need to take a nuanced approach to these opposition discourses. It’s a misinformation thicket that can’t simply be bushwhacked by identifying the dark money; the undergrowth is more intertwined and complicated, and we will need organizing and storytelling that untangles it.
If there’s a small bright spot in a report that suggests people with good intentions are being coopted by fossil fuel interests, it’s this: Climate denialism has been so discredited that the fossil fuel industry is now forced to come up with more inventive ways of opposing the energy transition, to the absurd extent of attributing excessive carbon emissions to wind power. That they are doubling down on this narrative also reflects the fact that many people do care deeply about whales and other wildlife. The contempt that the right used to show for environmentalism is outmoded, because the environment is too popular; now, the political enemies of the environment must pretend to be its friends.
