From Watts Up With That?

Ah, The Guardian, ever the beacon of balanced journalism, has outdone itself yet again. With a flourish of melodramatic despair, they’ve painted a portrait of Donald Trump as an eco-villain, brandishing policies like a black cape in a horror show of environmental doom. Let’s dive into their latest apocalyptic prophecy.

Donald Trump has vowed to immediately halt offshore wind energy projects “on day one” of a new term as US president, in his most explicit threat yet to the industry and the latest in a series of promises to undo key aspects of the transition to cleaner energy.

The drama unfolds with Trump, the presumed puppet master of planetary destruction, vowing to dismantle the beloved wind projects. Never mind that the industry might warrant a critical inspection of its impacts; The Guardian is more interested in framing this as an opening scene of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Trump repeated false accusations about wind projects as being lethal to whales during a rally on Saturday in Wildwood, a resort city on New Jersey’s coast, promising to stamp out an industry that has been enthusiastically backed by Joe Biden.

Here, Trump is almost comically vilified, conjuring images of dead whales washing up by the dozens, courtesy of those nefarious wind farms. The Guardian, in its infinite wisdom, assures us these claims are “false,” brushing aside any pesky nuances about the environmental cost of these structures.

“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said of the wind turbines. “They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”

One can almost hear the ominous music swell as Trump lists the crimes of these whirling dervishes of doom. Of course, The Guardian couldn’t possibly entertain the thought that he might be exaggerating but not entirely fabricating. Instead, they prefer their villains cartoonish and their plots black and white.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get more theatrical:

McLeod said that there has been a concerted misinformation campaign, funded by oil and gas interests, to mislead voters. “Big oil is benefiting from all of this fear mongering,” she said.

The plot thickens with the introduction of Big Oil, the shadowy antagonist lurking behind the curtain. According to The Guardian’s script, anyone who questions the sanctity of wind power must be a marionette dancing on petroleum-coated strings.

Finally, Trump’s distaste for the Paris Agreement is presented not as a policy position but as a nefarious scheme to single-handedly warm the globe:

“In one of the most vivid illustrations of his stance towards the climate crisis, Trump removed the US from the Paris climate agreement during his first White House term.”

…

“The Paris climate accord does nothing to actually improve the environment here in the United States or globally,” Mandy Gunasekara, Trump’s former EPA chief of staff, told the Guardian in February.

In the world according to The Guardian, this statement is less a legitimate argument and more a declaration of war against Mother Earth, conveniently ignoring any substantive issues with the agreement.

In this latest piece The Guardian crafts a narrative so richly woven with bias that one could mistake it for a tapestry of fiction. Trump’s environmental policy positions, whether one agrees with them or not, deserve a platform for discussion rather than dismissal as the raving of a would-be planet plunderer.

So here’s to The Guardian, our tireless sentinel against the apocalypse, ever vigilant, ever fearful, ever entertaining. If journalism ever tires them, there’s always a spot open in Hollywood script writing. Cheers to that!