We set the record straight on three common false claims about wind power, so your community can have a fact-based, constructive conversation about energy choices.  

The truth: Offshore wind development does not kill whales. 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency in charge of protecting whales, has found no evidence linking offshore wind surveys or activity to whale deaths.  

This lie is often spread by groups that sound like they are concerned with environmental protection, such as Protect our Coasts NJ and Green Oceans, but are funded by fossil fuel interests and climate denial think tanks. 

Ship collisions are the leading cause of death for large whales worldwide, and a warming planet is actually increasing those collisions. Heat-trapping pollution from fossil fuel energy is warming the oceans, shifting whales’ migration routes and feeding patterns, bringing them in closer contact with ships.  

The truth: Neighborhood cats are 20,000 times more dangerous to birds than wind turbines.  

Wind turbine strikes can happen, but out of an estimated 3.3 billion bird deaths in 2014, less than .025% resulted from turbine collisions, according to analyses by MIT and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Collisions with glass buildings are far more dangerous to birds, and no one proposes we stop building skyscrapers.  

And compared to cats, which kill billions of birds a year, wind turbines don’t even come close.  Putting a bell on your cat – if they will allow such a thing – is a much better way to help birds.