About a month ago, I interviewed a state senator for my KOPN radio program, Farm and Fiddle. He is a Republican, but has sponsored a bill regarding solar energy that I think any environmentalist should pay attention to. While our current Missouri statutes allow for solar collectors on houses as independent systems, and allow for solar collectors to be hooked into the grid, the statutes also allow for giant installations. These huge collections of huge collectors are owned by huge corporations that export energy to ...who knows where? St. Louis? Chicago? New York City? And beyond? But what the statutes don’t allow is middle-sized systems that might help communities, subdivisions or other small groups of users. That’s what his bill, which is in the very beginning stages of development, could do.
I got a little teasing for bringing a Republican voice to my program, as most people think I’m a pretty entrenched lefty, but I believe in working my issue rather than falling into party politics. I wanted to understand this bill and the future of solar which has become increasingly confusing as it has received the financial boost from investors and the government. This bill might make a good impact on the industry for communities here. And if this bill, which was crafted by environmental groups, is corrupted by big industry? Don’t we want to keep our eyes on it so we can react and testify as it moves along?
Here in Missouri, all three branches of government are dominated by the Republican party. The buzz is that in a couple of years the federal government will also slant that way. That means that if we want to make positive changes, we need to learn to work with Republicans. When that changes, we’ll be working with the Dems. But, in either case, we can’t let lawmakers operate on their own because they’re not working for us. Both parties are working for the moneyed side—corporate or plutocratic. That’s how the system has developed, and we ordinary folks have to be vigilant.
Not too far from my place, a giant corporation has been soliciting for land and many of our neighbors have signed up. As one fellow told me, it seems odd that his own land where his cattle graze today will be fenced away from him with a chain-link fence and warning signs, but the “passive income” will let him buy more land in a neighborhood that’s not so blighted by the installations.
While he and others have signed on, others are holding back. There are a lot of questions about the community value of these “solar farms” including questions about how the land will be taxed, whether services like schools will suffer, and whether our volunteer fire departments can handle emergencies with infrastructure—solar panels—we don’t yet understand.
But I digress. Let’s go back to the Republican Missouri state senator. What the statutes regarding solar don’t allow, yet, is for systems bigger than a rooftop but smaller than a hayfield. Those systems would allow cooperative neighbors to build a system of their own, or a developer to build a sun-powered subdivision with memberships to their small grid. Missourians are accustomed to this kind of cooperative system. My electricity, water, telephone and internet come from small cooperative systems that are owned by my neighborhood. Some subdivisions have shared cable TV systems or shared sewage systems.
Because nothing happens without legal support in this world, this senate bill would provide guidelines for middle-sized solar installation. The Senator himself has a home system hooked into the grid and he told me other Republican lawmakers have similar solar systems. They call themselves “green Republicans.”
Another bill I can get behind would put more money into agriculture “specialty crops,” providing loans to landowners that might (for example) want to disc in their corn stubble, plant clover to enrich the soil and then grow an apple orchard. The sponsor, another Republican, values this kind of “niche” farming that feeds your neighbors instead of exporting grain to other places. Since the predominant agriculture in my neighborhood is corn and soybeans, two crops that are raised with intensive use of chemicals now causing disease for my neighbors, I am happy to think that there might be loans for them to convert their fields to something else. Will farmers give up the chemicals? That, of course, depends on consumer demand.
I’ve watched the sustainable ag system develop for more than 20 years and I’ve been amazed at how effective consumer action is in changing this system.
So, to sum up, we see that change depends on us. Whether we’re talking about state statutes, the Feds, or consumer demand, lawmakers respond to us and we’re making the world we live in. If you have an issue that you care about, don’t let the partisan politics stifle your voice.
Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. She also is a co-founder of CAFOZone.com, a website for people who are affected by concentrated animal feeding operations. Her latest book is "The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History." Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2022
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us