MI Healthy Climate Plan

Rural solutions needed

By Levi Teitel | March 5, 2022

What makes Michigan unique is our Great Lakes and the amazing resources they provide. But for too long, policymakers have put large corporations and their lobbyists in the driver’s seat and have failed to take serious steps towards averting the climate crisis and protecting our environment. Our state has a chance to correct course and meet the ambitious goals in the MI Healthy Climate Plan, led by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) and Governor Gretchen Whitmer, putting us on a path to carbon neutrality. While the plan is a great start, there are still ways it can be strengthened so we can address the climate crisis, the greatest challenge of our lifetime. To fight the climate crisis, we must put affected communities first, including Michigan’s rural communities.

The climate crisis affects our agriculture, our ecosystems, and the air we breathe. These concerns are especially harmful for rural communities and their resilience. Throughout recent history, rural economies have been sites of extractive industries like mining, logging, and factory farming, which has contributed to the climate crisis. Meanwhile, lax government regulations have resulted in environmental destruction just for the sake of making money.

At a time when we’re seeing record-high corporate profits and accelerating climate disasters, it should be clear that change is needed. That’s why the MI Healthy Climate Plan needs to include the following: insights and takeaways from the Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force, attention to regenerative farming practices and agricultural pollution, and energy cooperatives and community choice aggregation as alternatives to corporate-owned energy utilities.

Ending our use of carbon-emitting fossil fuels is a good place to start and looking at findings from the UP Energy Task Force will help. Michiganders, mostly in rural areas, are the largest users of residential propane in the country. And yet, for many Michigan families, propane is unaffordable because it is largely unregulated and subject to corporate-driven price inflation. By including findings from the UP Energy Task Force—like installing cost-saving electric heat pumps at a large scale, updating and weatherizing existing housing stock, making grain drying on farms more energy efficient, and having better transportation options, which is lacking in rural Michigan—we can lessen our climate damage and save families and farmers money.

Along with recommendations from the UP Energy Task Force, our state needs to have more regenerative farming and less agricultural pollution to improve our environment. Rural communities are dealing with the stench and pollution that comes with factory farming—namely, from animal waste that seeps into our waterways. That means the MI Healthy Climate Plan must take concrete steps to curb factory farm pollution, and that means taking steps to curb overall waste. We should not include false solutions like anaerobic digestion, and it should be taken out of the MI Healthy Climate Plan.

The plan should take steps to encourage regenerative farming more than what the plan now includes. Regenerative farming has been practiced for millennia in Indigenous communities and is just now making headway in Western food systems. Regenerative farming uses conservation practices like cover crops and no-till farming which reduce soil erosion and chemical runoff. Doing these things at a large scale will be essential to lessen the damage we’re already seeing in our water.

Finally, we need to ensure that impacted communities will be empowered to make decisions about their own energy use, and that means having alternatives to corporate-owned energy utilities. For decades, electrical cooperatives have led the charge in rural Michigan for delivering quality service at a reasonable cost all while using renewable sources. Along with cooperatives, community choice aggregation (CCA) is gaining traction throughout the state to address the needs of low-income families, communities of color, and Tribal nations who have been continually ignored by corporate-owned utilities. CCA allows residents of a community to have the power to decide where they get their energy from. The village of L’Anse on the shores of Lake Superior is already doing this successfully and is a great example to follow.

The MI Healthy Climate Plan is an important plan for getting Michigan on track to fight the climate crisis and all communities need to be heard in this process, especially rural areas. Rural and urban communities alike can and should work together to advocate for a better climate and a fairer economy so everyone can be healthy and thrive. Let’s speak up together and make sure this plan is what we all deserve it to be.

Levi Teitel is the rural communications coordinator with Progress Michigan, a nonprofit communications advocacy and government watchdog group. He is currently based in Emmet County.