Donald Trump’s lethal fossil/nuke attack on the US renewable energy industry is poised to destroy America’s ability to compete in global markets for the foreseeable future. 

“Drill baby drill” and yet another “nuclear renaissance” are Trump’s siren calls for a destroyed American economy.

Despite Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” hype, wind, solar, geothermal, battery storage and other green sources are far cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable, faster to build and job producing than fossil fuels and nuclear reactors.

Thus, more than 80% of the world’s new energy production continues to come from wind, solar, geothermal, battery storage and other green sources.  Both nuclear power and fossil fuels are in steep global decline.

Though photovoltaic cells were first deployed at New Jersey’s Bell Labs in 1957, the booming solar panel industry is now dominated by China. The U.S. does have the capacity to produce a substantial 50 gigawatts of solar panels every year.  

But the GOP’s federal attacks on green regulations, tax breaks and subsidies have severely damaged the industry.  The assault has been one-upped by California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, who is forcing ratepayers to eat at least $11 billion in over-market subsidies for two reactors near San Luis Obispo.  

Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs and the MAGA Congress’s attacks on US electric car makers have also turned that industry over to the Chinese. Newsom has made a “green” name for himself by banning the purchase of fossil-fired cars in California after 2035.  But he’s also decimated the state’s once-booming solar industry, which has covered more than 1.8 million CA rooftops.  More than 17,000 jobs have been lost in the solar industry collapse Newsom’s regulators have imposed.

Meanwhile, the EV industry’s accelerated efficiency, range and falling prices virtually guarantee that by 2035, few consumers will be buying gas-fired cars anywhere, least of all in California, whose long driving distances make petro-vehicles more costly than ever.

Thus, Trump’s attacks on green technologies—-solar panels, wind turbines, advanced battery storage and electric cars—-have made the U.S. into the world’s Dead Man Walking in the green global markets that are becoming MAGA America’s techno graveyard.

Amidst the chaos, there’s been one new green light: the huge Empire wind farm off NY’s Long Island coast. Trump has been toying with the project’s permits for months, costing the builders millions. 

But now Trump’s lifted ban on Empire’s construction has prompted some in the global energy community to ask if we might be entering a true sea change in the planetary climate crisis?

After all…for many years the Donald’s hatred of wind turbines has been front and center. It may have started with his unhinged opposition to an 11-turbine off-shore Scottish array built in waters a short distance from a Trump golf course. 

In January, on his first day in his second term as U.S. president, Trump ordered a “temporary withdrawal” of any new federal leasing for the billions of dollars worth of new wind turbine projects scheduled for of the Outer Continental Shelf. 

He declared: “We’re not going to do the wind thing. Big, ugly windmills. They ruin your neighborhood.” Trump also has claimed the noise from wind turbines cause cancer, despite the American Cancer Society and numerous others showing that this is untrue.

Most recently the Trump anti-wind assault has focused on a giant 54-turbine farm being built by being built by Norway based Equinor. It has been in development for more than seven years and is estimated at this point to being one-third finished.

The huge project, sited 15 to 30 miles in the Atlantic south of Long Island, has been front and center of Trump’s anti-green campaign. Priced at $7 billion, it is slated to be fully operational by the end of 2027. Generating 810 megawatts, it aims to power more than 500,000 homes. 

Trump’s vow to kill it has been taken as a huge blow to the global wind industry.

Last week’s reversal has sent shock waves through the world energy future.

For many months, wind and solar have accounted for 80% or more of the world’s new energy capacity. The primary reasons are cost, time to build and security of the investment.

A recent Boston University study has shown that wind and solar are by far the cheapest and fastest to build sources of new electric power. They’re also the most secure investments.

This comes amidst ayet another massive new super-hyped industry “nuclear renaissapush to build new atomic reactors, to prolong the life of old ones, and even to revive some that are already shut.

But the numbers playing out in the marketplace have pushed hard against this latest “nuclear renaissance.”

Much-hyped Small Modular Reactors have already taken massive hits. NuScale, the first company to get approval for an SMR design, saw its first order cancelled due to soaring projected costs and sagging production schedules.  

The NuScale cancellation has been accompanied by industry-wide explosions in projected failure.  Despite huge government subsidies and strong support from Democratic governors like California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, Massachusetts Maureen Healey, New York’s Kathy Hochul and others, new nukes can nowhere compete with wind or solar in the projected marketplace for future electric supply.

The nuke industry’s biggest hope has been Trump’s assault on wind and solar, along with the gutting of atomic safety regulations. 

But with this unexpected green light for this massive Long Island wind farm, some hope all that may be about to change.

As it was announced last week on the Empire Wind website: “On April 16, 2025, the Secretary of the Interior directed BOEM’s (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) Acting Director to order Empire Offshore Wind LLC to halt ongoing activities related to the Empire Wind project. On May 19, 2025, the order was amended to lift the halt on activities.”

However, as the Long Island newspaper Newsday reported two days later, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Bergum is “encouraged by Gov. Hochul’s comments about her willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity.” 

Newsday also reported in the article by Mark Harrington, with the federal government reversal announcement on Empire Wind, Hochul “reaffirmed that New York will work with the [Trump] administration and private entities on new energy projects…” 

And it noted a “visit earlier this month” of Burgum to Brooklyn at which he “met with National Grid which had previously supported a pipeline into the metropolitan area to relieve a gas supply shortage. The project was nixed during former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration.”

Lee Zeldin, named by Trump as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and a former member of the House of Representatives from Long Island, was on the island last month and boosting a gas pipeline that would carrying fracked natural gas from Pennsylvania to a hub in Albany. 

He noted that there is “a ban in New York” on fracking but pointed to Pennsylvania, where “all parties work together and they tap into the extraction of natural gas.”

There long was a major push to allow fracking in New York State drawing from the same Marcellus Shale formation that extends from Pennsylvania. Adding to the challenge to fracking—a term for hydraulic fracturing, which uses fluids under high pressure and 600 chemicals to extract oil and gas from deep underground rock formations — were journalistic investigations, most prominently two HBO TV documentaries, “Gasland,” by Josh Fox. 

They found that fracking regularly leads to gas and oil migrating into water. “Gasland” includes numerous scenes of people turning on water faucets, holding a lighter to what’s coming out and flames erupting because of fracking. 

In New York, fracking was banned in 2014.

Is accepting fracked gas the quid quo pro for the Trump administration reversing its new move on Empire Wind?

As Newsday also reported, environmentalists “were quick to pounce.” Food & Watch Watch, based in Washington, D.C. and active on Long Island, said Hochul’s backtracking further by giving life to a fracked gas project that was already buried once would show just how deeply she’s willing to side with corporate polluters over everyday New Yorkers.” 

If Empire is allowed to go forward and demonstrates how offshore wind power provides electricity cheaper than nuclear, oil and gas (fracked or otherwise), that would be a mixed gain.

As if to underscore the illusion, Trump has followed his larger assault on America’s renewable industry with legislation meant to radically reduce the regulatory oversight of new nuclear power plants.  By making already lax permit requirements even less stringent, Trump hopes to begin pouring already hyper-expensive reactors into America’s already hyper-heavy fossil/nuclear mix.  After all….what could go wrong?

How about: the ability of the US economy to compete in global markets, along with the human ability to survive on this planet? 

Karl Grossman hosts Enviro-Video and wrote Power Crazy.  Harvey Wasserman hosts the Green Grassroots Emergency Election Protection zoom (grassrootsep.org)  and wrote Solartopia!  Our Green-Powered Earth.