The forecast for weather was light snow flurries, but they turned into an all day slog that made the roads treacherous.
Nevertheless, I made my way out to rural Montcalm County, Michigan, to catch up with Jed Welder, a farmer, Proud Army Veteran, and former Trustee on the local Sydney Township board. When a wind developer came to the area some years ago looking to sign up land for turbines, Jed and other farmers took a hard look at it, and saw their skepticism turn to enthusiasm when they spoke to farmers in neighboring counties who had only good things to say about the impacts of wind development.
That’s when he ran headlong into the “outside agitators” – a traveling roadshow of trained, fossil fuel operatives, who spread disinformation, and organized chaotic meetings, harassment of local officials, and threats against Farmers who dared to oppose them.
Since then, Farmers have been driven off the local boards, “exclusionary” ordinances against wind and solar development have been passed. In response, the State of Michigan, lead by Governor Gretchen Whitmer, passed siting reform that required local governments to obey the law (exclusionary ordinances against legal land use are violations), and work with farmers and developers on sensible regulations.
That hasn’t stopped the harassment against Jed.
Wind Developers had contracted with Welder to place a Meteorological Tower (“Met Tower”) on a small patch of his land. It’s a slender tower, held up by guy wires, meant to be a platform for anemometers and other devices to evaluate wind conditions. Although it has no lights, and makes no noise, “Antis” showed up at the local Township meetings, claiming it was impacting their quality of life and lifestyles, and demanded it be taken down.
But there’s still a year to go on the contract, and Jed has refused.
We discussed as the snow closed in around us.
Back in the early noughties there was a fad illness called electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Someone claimed, for instance, that a new cell tower was making her sick, even though it hadn’t been turned on yet. All blinded tests showed that the complainants couldn’t, in fact, detect whether WiFi was turned on or if the cellphone they were handed was real or a sham.
For some people, once an idea is locked in their heads they can’t let go of it. They have the certainty without the understanding. This is the basis for evidence-proof religious faith, or grief-driven denial of the death of a loved one, or the belief that Elon Musk is a genius.