The fossil fuel coordinated “Citizens for Local Choice” failed to gather enough signatures to appear on Michigan’s November ballot.
This MAGA based initiative was aimed at repealing much needed siting reforms for clean energy, that were passed to protect farmer’s property rights, as well as the critical energy transition in a major industrial state.
The “Antis” will keep trying.
I wrote about it in my April column.
Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:
For decades, farmers across the state and across the midwest have been been successfully harvesting clean energy – with solar and wind farms, on their land.
Farmers with clean energy on their land have found it helps diversify their income, keep farms in the family, protect communities against urban sprawl, provide huge new public revenues for schools, fire departments, sheriff patrols and local services, and, not incidentally, help insure a livable future for all of our grandchildren.
Yet in recent years, Farmers who have sought to use their private property to farm the sun, or the wind, have been targets of abuse, harassment, and even physical threats, from conspiracist mobs driven by an organized campaign of Q-anon level disinformation on social media.
For the last 7 years, I have crisscrossed the midwest interviewing farmers and rural officials about exactly this situation.
Township meetings have been disrupted, and officials have been threatened, driven to resign, or even in some cases, to early death, from stress. Many boards have been bullied into writing “Exclusionary” ordinances that trample on farmer’s property rights.
Such ordinances are plainly illegal, as the Michigan Zoning and Enabling Act makes clear.
“A zoning ordinance or zoning decision shall not have the effect of totally prohibiting the establishment of a land use within a local unit of government in the presence of a demonstrated need for that land use within either that local unit of government or the surrounding area within the state,..”
The reason townships have been able to get away with such illegal actions, is because the law has no enforcement mechanism, other than for farmers or developers to pursue an expensive and time consuming lawsuit, which most are loath to do.
Actions against farmers and clean energy are driven by local NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) residents, often wealthy newcomers to rural areas, who view the farmers not as the backbone of the community, stewards of the land, or even neighbors and human beings with rights to be respected, but rather as sharecroppers, “the Help”, or grounds keepers, whose only function is to maintain an unchanging pastoral backdrop for the newcomer’s “Green Acres” life style – even if that means farmers must operate at a loss.
Add to that a concerted, decades long campaign of disinformation by the fossil fuel industry, and its allies, against clean energy, and you have an easily manipulated population of the angry, the aggrieved, the fearful and misinformed, to weaponize against local boards, farmers and their rights.
New siting reforms, signed by Governor Whitmer last November, end this toxic dynamic, and insure farmer’s property rights, massive revenue benefits for rural communities, and a fighting chance for our grandchildren.
The fossil fuel industry’s response – that the reform “takes away local control” is a demonstrable fiction.
First of all, there is nothing more local than a farmer making decisions about his or her own land.
Local officials can, and are, negotiating with solar and wind developers for legitimate concerns like setbacks, noise limits, visual screening, and decommissioning, over and above the bare minimums specified by the state.
The law completely supports such workable ordinances.
In recent weeks, exactly this kind of ordinance was approved, and a new solar project permitted, by quietly courageous officials in Bushnell Township, Montcalm County, who braved threats, harassment, and abuse to do the hard, steady work of protecting private property rights, as well as serving the legitimate concerns of the community.
No State action required.
The most telling aspect to this whole controversy is that no farmer will ever be forced to site a wind turbine or solar farm that he or she has not asked for, and for which he or she is not well compensated.
That is not true of oil wells, or of fossil gas pipelines, that actually do have the power of “Eminent Domain” – and can seize private property without approval from landowner or community.
The pro-Big Oil “Citizens for Local Choice”, have nothing to say about actual loss of local control to the fossil fuel barons – they seek to further Fossil Fuel’s agenda to undermine the competition – clean energy.
That’s all you need to know about the real motivations of this deceptive ballot initiative..
If, in the coming month or two, you are approached to sign a petition described as for “local control”, do yourself and your grandchildren a favor – stand up for the farmers, and for the future.
Decline to sign!
Ultimately, the “Local Choice” operation couldn’t attract donors willing to fund the shaky coalition of grifters, conspiracy kooks, MAGA zealots, clueless yokels, internet trolls and muddle headed greenies.
They relied on a mixed bag of true believer loons roving around rural flea markets, gas stations and gun shows badgering locals for signatures.
You’re using a different definition of “local” than they are. By “local control” they mean GOP or corporate control, whichever level of government that applies.
Still in favor of Nuremberg type trials for crimes against the exosphere and humanity.