Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Inflation Reduction Act Contains Much for Rural Areas to Celebrate

Looking at the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), there’s a lot for rural America to celebrate. With our aging population, it’s huge that Medicare will be able to negotiate drug prices, starting in 2023. And with our poor diets, fueled by our custom of eating breakfast at the Quik Shoppe but don’t get me started, it will be great that insulin co-pays will be limited. The Democrats should be celebrating the IRA win now and all the way to 2024. The IRA passed, by the way, with no Republican votes and rural America should respond with a thank-you.

And, if someone offered you help to retire your billions of debt, would you take it? Even if you had to eat some words, act less stubborn and spend some money for a better plan going forward? That’s the question for many of America’s rural electric co-ops, and fingers crossed they’ll take the dough offered in the IRA and move toward renewables.

Missouri’s rural electric co-ops owe the Feds a whopping $1.9 billion for loans to build their (our—I’m in this, too) coal-burning electric plants. Phasing in renewables has proved nearly impossible with that loan hanging over the co-op management and boards. Instead of creating a plan to move forward, they’ve reacted with stalling and sarcasm. At one of my county’s annual co-op meetings, the co-op director joked that global warming would make Missouri weather more like Florida, and everyone wants to move to Florida. That got a big laugh, but it doesn’t solve climate change. Now that much of Missouri is in drought (and Florida’s annual hurricane toll has forced all major insurance companies to abandon the state’s homeowner market), the joke’s on us. It’s time to take climate change seriously and use all strategies to walk back our carbon footprints.

Today, by the way, the same director has lightened up the sarcasm slightly but points out that the nation isn’t ready to shut down coal plants until there are “utility sized storage options” to fill in when the alternatives—solar and wind power—are dead because of weather. Meaning when there’s no sunshine or no wind. That is a concern, sir, but those giant batteries, or whatever the storage answer becomes, aren’t going to invent themselves. They need backing, of the financial and the public spirited kind.

There’s $5 billion in the IRA to get $250 billion in low-cost loans to reduce coal debt and reinvest in clean technologies. And another $9.7 billion in assistance for rural electric co-ops to move toward clean alternatives. This huge investment, by the way, can allow co-ops to re-train workers and train new ones to handle the new power sources and to re-jigger the grid to create a more robust distribution system.

For the most part, so far, farmland’s transition from un-clean energy like low-MPG vehicles, gas-hog farm equipment and coal-generated electricity to electric vehicles, electric tractors and alternative electricity sources is up to individual consumer choice. I have hoped that conservation comes back like it did in 1979-1980. That year, oil prices doubled and gas prices hit a dollar for the first time.

We had had a little prelude to the 1979 crisis a few years earlier when OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, declared an oil embargo against nations that had supported Israel. During that crisis—October 1973 to March 1974—the price of oil almost quadrupled, rising from $3 per barrel to nearly $12 per barrel. Yep, that was the end of 40 cents a gallon! And consumers reacted by creating carpools, hanging laundry on clotheslines instead of using dryers and bicycling or walking to work.

In those good old days, consumers took the crisis as a matter of personal responsibility. President Nixon asked that citizens lower thermostats by 4 degrees (to around 70) during the day and lower at night. Utilities passed out decals of Peanuts’ Snoopy dog resting on his doghouse with the slogan “Savenergy.”

In the 1978-1979 crisis, President Carter suggested a thermostat reading of 65 and was photographed in the White House in his long sweater to demonstrate his willingness to lead. There were plenty of people resisting, declaring, “The President’s not going to tell me how to heat my house,” but enough good-hearted folks pitched in and we made it stylish to ride bikes to work and we put a dime in the kitty every time we hung laundry on the line.

But that was then and this is now. And it’s still up to us. If you’re a co-op member, consider running for your board and making a speech at the meeting that confronts the old fogies and their outdated ideas. You probably won’t win, but your effort makes a point. And, if you can’t run, at least ask questions at the annual meeting.

With money for rural co-ops in the IRA, the Feds are trying to help. All the co-ops have to do is swallow their pride and raise their hands. And a thank you to the Dems wouldn’t hurt.

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, November 15, 2022

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