“They Don’t Own the View”. Farmers Voice Frustration with Anti Clean Energy Newcomers

Here’s what we see.
John or Jane farmer has been steward of a chunk of farmland for generations.
Somewhere along the way, because farming is a treacherous and cyclical business, and because sometimes disasters happen, or prices drop, or someone gets sick, the farmer might have sold an acre or two along the road to be able to pay taxes.
Other farmers in the community had to do the same thing.
Gradually, little points of sprawl begin popping up in agriculturally zoned areas, with newcomers buying their little slice of heaven, second home, or rural faux farm.

Then, in the last decade, as farming continues to be as tough as ever, new opportunities arose. A farmer could get an offer from a wind developer, in exchange for a couple of acres, to put a turbine on a small patch of their land, and derive 25 or 30 years of guaranteed, drought proof, flood proof, recession proof income, while still continuing to farm over the majority of the land.

But the newcomers, in the meantime, had never really grasped that the farmers were the longtime bedrock of the community, stewards of the land, and businesspeople, who also hoped to scratch out enough of a living so they could feed a family, send a child to school, live a decent life, and maybe slow down when they got up in their 70s.
But for the Fox-News-addled ex-urbanites, the farmer is merely unskilled Labor. The Help.
Groundskeepers tasked to maintain an unchanging pastoral back drop for the second home, or country squire lifestyle.

Now consider the fetid, rotten compost of 30 years of Fox News programming, constant drumbeat of right wing radio, legions of nihilistic, meme spewing 22 year olds at keyboards in fossil funded “think tanks” around the country, and cunningly programmed bots from a host of international bad actors.
Add in a rich mix of nativist conspiracy thinking and misinformation about “wind turbine syndrome” or solar panels causing “birds to burst into flame”, Facebook algorithms targeted specifically to each individual, and you have an angry mob of easily lead, aggrieved, and volatile, sometimes armed, individuals who have been weaponized, and aimed at small township boards across the midwest.

Mlive:

“People in our township were spun into a frenzy because they were lied to by people who didn’t want their view to change. The problem is they don’t own their view,” said longtime family farm owner Clara Ostrander, of Azalia in Monroe County.

“Their view is farmland families like mine have tended, preserved, and paid taxes on for generations. They should not get to decide what we grow or what we harvest. And that includes harvesting the sun for electricity.”

Democrats on the state Senate’s energy committee voted on Tuesday to advance a pair of bills to overhaul how decisions are made across Michigan about where to build large-scale renewable energy generation. Under the legislation, the Michigan Public Service Commission would become the ultimate decision-maker for renewable energy installations with a 100-megawatt capacity or larger.

–

Tuesday’s roll call committee votes came after a string of public testimonies that started with two Michigan farmers, both of whom want to install renewable energy on their land but were denied by local authorities.

Both Ostrander and Montcalm County farmer Dick Farnsworth testified during the committee hearing Tuesday in Lansing.

Farnsworth said he finds it ironic how those who oppose renewable projects because it would disrupt the rural nature of an area, may instead be hastening the loss of that farmland to residential or commercial development.

“Farming is a tough business. My family has owned the farm since 1880 and we would like to continue to operate it as a farm. Unfortunately, the land lease payments will not be able to cover the taxes and maintenance in the very near future. We signed a wind lease because we believe in renewable energy and that it would be a big boost in income, allowing us to keep the property as a farm,” Farnsworth said.

Instead, he “watched with dismay” as township officials were harassed and intimidated by those opposed to renewable energy, effectively clamping down the ability for any utility-scale wind or solar project to be developed. And that sort of across-the-board opposition to renewable energy just isn’t going to work in this climate anymore, the farm owner argued.

“As a Christmas tree farmer, I have been seeing that climate change is real and it is here now. We are responsible for the damage that we have done to our environment,” Farnsworth said.

The pending bills would effectively strip authority from local governments and give state regulators control over where large renewable energy installations will be built. A new amendment would allow an initial four- to eight-month period during which developers could work with local officials before state authority takes over, but locals could not enforce any rules stricter than state law.