It is one of his favorite lines about clean energy, delivered with a wave of the hand. Wind power, the president said on the debate stage, "kills all the birds. It's very intermittent. Got a lot of problems." [1] The birds part is the part people remember, and it is the part the government's own wildlife agency has already measured. The measurement is nowhere near what he says.

What the count actually says

The US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that wind turbines kill about 234,000 birds a year in this country. [1][2] That is a real number, and a real cost worth managing. It is also, set beside the other things that kill birds, tiny. House cats kill an estimated 2.4 billion birds a year. Collisions with building glass kill about 599 million. Cars and trucks kill about 214.5 million. [1] Against a housecat, a wind turbine is a rounding error: cats kill more than ten thousand birds for every one a turbine does.

WHAT ACTUALLY KILLS BIRDS (per year, US)

  • Cats: about 2.4 billion [1]
  • Building glass: about 599 million [1]
  • Vehicles: about 214.5 million [1]
  • Wind turbines: about 234,000 [1][2]

Why the comparison matters

Singling out the turbine is a choice, and a revealing one. If the worry were really the birds, the conversation would start with cats and windows, the two causes that do almost all of the killing; wind turbines account for less than 0.02 percent of the songbird losses. [1] The bird is not the point. The bird is the costume on an argument about energy, and once you set the real numbers side by side the costume comes off. You can debate the price or the look of a wind farm. You cannot call the smallest danger in the sky the one that "kills all the birds."

THE BOTTOM LINE

  • "[Wind] kills all the birds": False [1]
  • Turbines: about 234,000 birds a year; cats: 2.4 billion [1][2]
  • Wind is under 0.02 percent of songbird deaths [1]

A wind turbine is a machine with real tradeoffs, birds among them, and those are worth weighing honestly. What you cannot do is hand the worst of the blame to the cause that does the least of the damage. The government counted. The cat won.