‘We Will Not Have Climate Progress Without a Functional Democracy’
January 5, 2026
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The Dec. 22 orders from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to halt all activities on offshore wind projects on the East Coast for 90 days sent shock waves of fear through the wind industry, climate advocates, and workers.
The threat posed by these orders spoke to our fears in the climate movement: that federal orders could be unstoppable; that all of our work could be for nothing; that we would lose our chance to decarbonize the East Coast for a decade or more; and that the climate crisis will spin out of control.
There’s a real basis for these concerns. While our region’s growing solar fleet is substantially eating into gas use in power plants in the spring and summer, output is less in the fall and winter. Without offshore wind, there is simply no credible near-term plan to replace or even significantly reduce our outsized dependence on gas and petroleum in the winter, and to get off the roller coaster of high power prices caused by this dependence.
The impact on workers is much more immediate: thousands in the construction industry got put out of work three days before Christmas, and face an uncertain future.
Once the immediate fear subsides, there are the facts. All of these offshore wind projects were fully vetted by the U.S. military during multi-year federal review processes that were necessary for them to proceed to construction.
And there is no legal basis for the Trump administration to revoke leases on a whim. This was demonstrated by how quickly the courts shot down this summer’s stop work order on Revolution Wind. The judge went so far as to characterize the administration’s actions as “the height of arbitrary and capricious.”
Authoritarian tactics
That BOEM’s action is highly unlikely to be supported by any legal basis is entirely characteristic of the approach of the Trump administration. And it points to why Trump is not just a threat to our region’s workforce and to our ability to stabilize and reduce energy costs while combating the climate crisis, but to our Republic.
At the most basic level, what Trump and the fossil fuel stooges he has put in power are doing is bullying. It’s an attempt to scare off an emerging industry that threatens the obscene profits of the oil and gas industry, by means of extreme regulatory uncertainty.
But it is also reminiscent of so many other actions by the Trump administration, such as his executive order attempting to overturn the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. Many of Trump’s actions in the first year of his second term have fallen outside the bounds of his administration’s legal authority and due process.
That’s the point. Trump is intentionally and routinely overstepping these bounds to establish an entirely different kind of governance and ultimately a different kind of American society. These are exercises of power not because there is a legal basis or evidentiary record, but because the strong man says so.
An essential aspect of these actions is that they are based on premises that are transparently bogus. The classified “national security” claim of Trump’s latest assault on offshore wind is far from the first one.
We have tariffs on Canadian imports based on the claim that Canada is allowing fentanyl to be smuggled across the border, when in reality the overwhelming majority of fentanyl coming into the United States crosses our southern border. We have global tariffs imposed due to the threat that imports of lumber, upholstered furniture, and kitchen cabinets allegedly pose to our national security.
We have military strikes on boats in the Caribbean that no expert thinks are smuggling drugs to the United States. We have immigrants who have not been convicted of any crime being called the “worst of the worst,” and so many other examples of the Trump administration giving blatantly false rationales for its actions.
Trump is daring the system to stop him. Like his exceeding the executive branch’s legal authority, this is a demonstration of power.
Power over reality
It’s a very specific kind of power Trump seeks: power over reality. Authoritarian regimes need not only to control what their subjects do. They need to control what their subjects see, think, and feel, and they do so by controlling public narratives.
The Trump administration is working hard to replace public discourse based on facts and evidence with one that is controlled by his dictates, and those of his oligarchic backers in the tech industry and the oil and gas industry. This has happened everywhere, from the scrubbing of climate information on the EPA website to his installing executives at CBS.
A friend of mine in solar advocacy in Washington, D.C., revealed to me that in the Trump administration, when Trump puts something on his Truth Social media network, the post is called a “truth.” This naming is identical to what was used in the former Soviet Union for a main organ of state media, Pravda (“truth”).
What is “true” in the America that Trump is trying to build is not what is backed by fact and evidence. It’s what the boss said.
The bad news is that this is not one man, but symptomatic of larger problems in our society. On Jan. 2, while we in the climate and labor movement were holding a press conference and rally to protest Trump’s war on offshore wind in Providence, he was posting social media messages with doctored, out of date, and inaccurately captioned photos linking bird deaths to wind turbines.
This claim is similar to the big lie propagated by local anti-wind groups, which have routinely claimed, without a shred of evidence and contrary to the findings of marine scientists, that offshore wind is killing whales. At least one of these groups claims to have worked with the Trump administration on its anti-wind orders, which should not be a surprise. As these groups’ organizing relies on spreading conspiracy theories and a barrage of misleading when not false claims, they can be seen as a local militia in the Trump administration’s war on science and evidence-based decision-making.
This fight is far from over
All is not lost. As long the courts and other institutions in the U.S. government hold up, Trump and his administration cannot get away with their plans. And so far the courts have taken a very dim view of the lawless actions of this administration.
Three lawsuits have already been filed by offshore wind developers against the freeze on activities and the review of leases. If the courts maintain their commitment to requirements of legal due process and evidence, this pause on offshore activities could be brief.
And in the bigger scheme, we are not without power. Authoritarian regimes, given their need to control reality, are often quite brittle. Nationally, the Trump administration’s approval ratings are in the toilet, given that the daily, lived reality of Americans tends to contradict his statements, whether this is the reality of prices going up due to tariffs or their law-abiding immigrant neighbors being terrorized.
Here in Rhode Island, we have an alliance of environmental advocates and organized labor standing behind our offshore wind industry. The industry is further vocally supported by the McKee administration and every member of our Congressional delegation. We demonstrated that when we brought more than 100 people, including everyone from members of the U.S. Congress to union millwrights, out in the snow to protest on Jan. 2.
The remaining three years of the Trump administration are going to be a struggle. But just like the steel monopoles in the Atlantic Ocean that will hold wind turbines, we aren’t going anywhere. And while the connection between our fight for good jobs, stable power prices and climate action may at times seem distant to the struggle to resist an authoritarian takeover of America, these are deeply connected. We will not have climate progress without a functional democracy.
Every article in the press that is based on research and facts instead of conspiracy theories or authoritarian dictates, every time we stand up to say no to unlawful orders, every action taken for democracy and rule of law erodes what Trump is trying to do. This is not going to be easy, but in the end we will prevail.
Christian Roselund is the co-lead of Climate Action Rhode Island’s Yes to Wind campaign. He lives in Providence.
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This article doesn’t even deserve this comment, but importantly your ‘functional democracy’ will never occur while your group continues to slander anyone opposed to you. Just knock it off.
We get it Christian. – Trump Bad, Wind Good. If only the wind farms didn’t pave over the Narragansseet Bay floor with acres of scour, kill whales, dolphins and turtles during their construction, if only they didn’t dump oil and heated sea water treated with bleach into the bay during operation, if only their power cables didn’t emit EMFs and raise the water temperature around them, if only the power the cable generated was reliable and consistent, and if only the towers and blades didn’t produce radar scatter and our boats, ships and pave paws radar were not negatively impacted. It’s a lot of If Onlys that need to be addressed. All of these are documented along with the lack review by the FAA and proper DoD agencies. All of the issues are document in the public record.
My oh my, I cannot believe the falsehoods in this article. Please. Electricity cost has gone through the roof with the so called green energy. Where will all the discarded solar panels go after their life cycle? The deforestation in this state to built solar fields is awful. Where will the windmills go after their life cycle? Will they be dumped in the ocean? Nuclear power plants need to be built if you want to eliminate fossil fuel power plants. Solar and wind power will never meet our electric needs. FYI, fossil fuels will always be needed unless your plan is for the human race to revert to caveman life.
You are confused and 180 degrees off. The OSW industry has been heavily subsidized and would not exist without it, allowed to break laws, not held accountable to strict requirements for reporting, given ridiculously high rates for unreliable and fluky wind energy and have destroyed critical fishing grounds and polluted our waters for decades to come. You spread misinformation. Shame on you.
“It’s a very specific kind of power Trump seeks: power over reality. Authoritarian regimes need not only to control what their subjects do. They need to control what their subjects see, think, and feel, and they do so by controlling public narratives.” Christian, it is tragic you cannot see the irony in what you write. What you ascribe here to Trump is precisely what has been going on for decades—with “Global Warming” and then “Climate Change” histrionics, played out to shove through terribly destructive, outrageously expensive energy policies and technologies (industrial wind at the top of that list). Do you have any idea the extent of censorship and vilification those of us have suffered who have dared to question the efficacy and wisdom of pounding thousands of enormous machines into the seabed? Just how completely the Obama and Biden regimes, along with corporate “environmental” NGOs, bought-off university researchers, and major media outlets have controlled the public narrative of this insane boondoggle? Do you even recognize your own part in this “power over reality” assault? Likely not, because your entire belief system and professional identity—like all who have pushed this over-blown narrative for the past three decades—would shatter. I personally understand just how emotionally and mentally gobsmacking that life/identity-changing realization is. I hope you, too, will find your way to understanding.
Thanks Christian for posting this.
Wow, anti-wind activists are relentless, showing a need to distribute Christian’s comments more widely.
Though off-shore wind is indeed not without impacts, I’m convinced they are far less than fossil fuels alternatives which not only involve more emissions and uncertain prices for the fuel, but their extraction, shipments, and refining also have serious impacts.
Still, its good to try to slow the growth of energy demand thru efficiency and a stronger conservation ethic.
Finally fossil fuels use exports our RI dollars to out of state oil and gas interests that provide the fuel, (something that also should be considered when thinking about driving) giving another reason to use our wind resources
Thank you for this important op-ed! The connections between democracy and climate change are so important and fighting for both is critical. It’s great to see what RI is doing around wind.
Thanks for writing this Christian. Great piece.
People here complaining about subsidies for wind? Let’s pick a year. 2022 subsidies for US wind power – $3.59 billion. 2022 subsidies for US fossil fuels – $7 trillion. With virtually no pollution from wind power vs. local environmental pollution from extraction site to burner tips and climate impacts from fossil fuels AND about 1,950 times the subsidies, I’ll take wind. Thanks.
I’m glad to see Barry’s comments in support of this article by Christian. We need a functioning economy with jobs in many sectors and we need a functioning energy system with resilience. Sources like wind and solar supplant polluting sources like methane gas and coal and oil that contribute to heart disease, lung disease and it seems even diabetes! Plus they fail–witness frozen gas lines in Texas while wind continued to fuel the electric power. Solar is the fastest growing source of electricity and wind is there when the sun isn’t. And batteries are the future–check out the investments being made all over the world. If the US is to maintain its leadership in the world we have to stop fighting the clean energy future.
Most of the responses to this article sound angry, like people are feeling emotional more than relying on their reason. It is true that wind technology is not harmless. But what is the alternative? The reality on the ground and from 99.99% of scientists is that the planet is hotter, the atmosphere is wetter, and biodiversity loss is happening at the fastest rate of anytime in human history. If you can’t tell that New England’s weather is different, look at winter photos from 50 years ago. This change is due to burning fossil fuels.
I feel sad that people responding to this article feel marginalized and “slandered”. But the misinformation spreaders are not those of us who are scientists or health care workers and engage in research; it is the people indulging their rage at a changing world by telling fantasy stories. It isn’t hard to get facts but you have to read objective studies. Burning fossils (coal in Medieval London) has been known since at least the 14th century to cause human harming pollution. We have evolved at last beyond the truly “caveman” technology of burning stuff for heat and power. We have created technology that harnesses power from the wind and sun, and does it cleanly with less harm to the planet, its creatures and atmosphere than burning fossils.
Christian – nice piece – and you should consider rattling the cages of the anti-renewables fringe a mark of achievement.
We’ve got:
CG saying climate change is a worldwide scientific community conspiracy. (Really ?)
KK points out a mosaic of false complaints – including being subsidized ! Oh my.
W is worried about the equipments’ life cycle – good concern – but are you also complaining about the much more current and dangerous issues of methane leaks, fracking side effects, and the life cycle of oil rigs too ?
M thinks whales, dolphins and turtles are being killed during construction – pretty sure that’s simply not the case (either here or in Europe -where they’ve been at it much longer); but many of us, along with the rest of the planet, are very sure that rapidly warming ocean waters are a very real threat to all sea-life.
FU thinks your are slandering people – to which the follow up question should be: which statements were false ?
Beyond these dubious and refutable claims – none of these letters attack (or respond to) your core concern: that Trump’s behavior (vis wind, and elsewhere) is an offense to the entire nation (and mankind) and is something every American should be ashamed of. Are these commenters not bothered by the petty, mean spirited, corrupt and morally reprehensible embarrassment that is our president ?
Our current energy demands cannot be met with so called renewables. These have existed for decades and oil demands only continue to increase to meet increased per capita consumption. Meanwhile, 54 existing US nuclear facilities are operating in the background and not entering the discussion. Each could be scaled up, without any industrial sprawl off of the east coast. RI should stick to Dels Lemonade.
Agreed Barry. Efficiency is often the most effective way to meet demand. But for the remaining demand, offshore wind is a great way to reduce our outsized and expensive dependence on gas and petroleum for power in the winter.
“energy demands cannot be met with so called renewables” is a pretty remarkable claim. Are you privy to some supernatural information source that is not available to the rest of us ?
I recall reading of an esteemed scientist in the 1880’s declaring that NY City’s population could not possibly exceed 1 million people – by dutifly doing the math and determining that the City could not possibly absorb all of the horse manure that such a population would generate.
We are a pretty innovative species…
Christian, thank you for this timely and necessary OpEd. Those who don’t want to face the truth and acknowledge the current reality of course feel offended.
Globally, 95% of new electricity generation in the last year has been from wind, solar and battery storage, in the US it has been 91%, mostly in red states (they just don’t talk about it) , a lot of it from wind. Almost nobody installs fossil fuel generation anymore, because renewables are much less expensive.
While the rest of the world, and in particular red states in the US save money from making electricity from wind, Rhode Island continues to pay unnecessarily high electricity rates.
Why can’t we do what the rest of the world is doing to lower their energy cost with clean, abundant and affordable renewable energy? Why? Christian’s text explains the reasons very well.
And it’s a fact that those who parrot the disinformation of the fossil fuel industry are a minority. It’s as much a fact that the current oligarchic administration’s destructive position towards anything that would actually help the majority of Americans costs all but the top 1% dearly. That they seem to be ever present and are disproportionately loud doesn’t negate the fact that burning fossil fuels destroys the future of our children and the places we love, including our oceans.
I thought I might respond briefly to Wondering’s question above – “Where will the windmills go after their life cycle?” A good question and of concern to everyone. There are some very imaginative solutions being considered. For instance the nacelles, the turbine housings, are being repurposed as tiny homes, see the Yanko Design article here: https://www.yankodesign.com/2025/05/16/nestle-tiny-house-wind-turbine-nacelle-gets-a-second-life-as-compact-living/.
Yes the current blades are difficult to recycle. Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, and NREL are currently working on a new generation of blades that will be easier to recycle with a goal of complete circularity in the life of the blades. See: https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/infographic-recycling-wind-turbines
The freeze-thaw process, see https://rdcu.be/eXZFo, looks promising. The worst case scenario is that roughly 43 million tons of blades will be landfilled by 2050, a number that pales in comparison to the 1.873 Billion tons of toxic coal ash currently being “stored” in the United States (according to the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin), often with disastrous consequences. According to Earth Justice 70 million tons of coal ash is being produced yearly in the United States, see https://earthjustice.org/feature/coal-ash-map-sites-legacy-inactive-regulated for more information. Not to mention that the residue from burning fossil fuels which is currently being “stored” in the atmosphere and in our lungs.
Renewables aren’t perfect but the power that they generate is clean and cheap.
I tried to comment on this “discussion” yesterday but couldn’t’ come up with any way to respond to those who insist that yellow is red and blue is green. I could say that yellow is, in fact, yellow. But I know how that would go. “No it isn’t….Yes it is…..Isn’t…..Is….Isn’t…..” Sadly, that is the state of our national discussion these days. We talk with our fingers in our ears, saying “Nah, nah, nah…I can’t hear you.” I wish we could just agree to inhabit different planets and see which one fairs better. But unfortunately, we are condemned to co-habit this one and destroy it in the process.
As a parent of a 6-year-old, this isn’t theoretical for me. I think about my daughter’s future in Rhode Island, and I don’t see a viable path without renewables. The political and industry posturing around offshore wind ignores what’s actually at stake. Offshore wind has tradeoffs, but continued dependence on fossil fuels locks in higher costs, greater instability, and fewer choices for our kids. Thank you, Christian, for writing this necessary piece.
The vitriolic comments to a fact based article are both troubling and sad. Our government’s current actions in Venezuela highlight the war and violence intrinsic in our pursuit of the finite supply of fossil fuels. Please consider the bigger picture.
This is a vital piece by Christian Roselund. The BOEM’s 90-day freeze isn’t just a blow to our climate goals; it’s a direct assault on the rule of law and the thousands of workers laid off just before the holidays.
Halting projects that have already passed years of federal and military vetting is, as the courts have said, “arbitrary and capricious.” We cannot allow “power over reality” to dismantle our clean energy future and economic stability. Standing with the Yes to Wind campaign is standing up for both our environment and our democracy.
Wow, Green Oceans has gone full-on “climate change is a conspiracy theory.” Shows you the power of social media information bubbles to insulate people from reality. To those Green Oceans coastal residents who are wary of windmills, I invite you to re-engage with the scientific method and Enlightenment thinking as a whole. Perhaps attend an international climate conference. Reflect on the Keeling Curve, the century-old science of the greenhouse effect, the incontrovertible evidence for climate change being dangerous and caused by fossil fuel combustion. Even Trump’s NASA still has basic primers available on the topic for people who still don’t get it. https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/
Christian,
Excellent comments, which need to be spread widely.
I just wanted to take a moment to address the nuclear option presented in Wonderings comment – “Nuclear power plants need to be built if you want to eliminate fossil fuel power plants”, as well as the comment by FedUp – “Meanwhile, 54 existing US nuclear facilities are operating in the background and not entering the discussion. Each could be scaled up, without any industrial sprawl off of the east coast.” According to the posting on the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office about nuclear waste disposal: “Spent nuclear fuel. The nation has over 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. DOE is responsible for disposing of this high-level waste in a permanent geologic repository but has yet to build such a facility because policymakers have been at an impasse over what to do with this spent fuel since 2010. As a result, the amount of spent nuclear fuel stored at nuclear power plants across the country continues to grow by about 2,000 metric tons a year. Meanwhile, the federal government has paid billions of dollars in damages to utilities for failing to dispose of this waste and may potentially have to pay tens of billions of dollars more in coming decades.”
More wasted CO2 all round with 0.015g emitted per post.
Solar on my rooftop and love it – saves me from the exorbitant delivery fees tacked on to the grid.
Windfarms out in the ocean – no way no how. It’s improperly sited and no different than clear cutting a forest for a solar farm – unnecessary and irresponsible. Our energy needs are here on land, thus energy generating facilities should be here on land, in proximity to where it will be used.
I’m sure someone is going to chime in with ‘reef’ creation. This is a greenwashing argument, and not grounded in the science of siting artificial reefs. Of course structure attracts marine life – so do solar panel frames among the field resulting from the clear cut forest. It’s not what is supposed to be there.
Wind farms should be on land (if at all), adjacent to existing development and energy infrastructure. The vast and sprawling overreach that has materially altered millions of square acres of wild habitat is sinful, and no amount of monitoring and mitigation funding will correct for it. When decommissioning takes place, be it now or in 20 years, we have ecosystem wide disruptions all over again. Just leave the ocean alone.