Land use bill for renewables--you didn't like local control did you? Are plant-based alternatives really better for the environment? Involved in outdoor recreation in some way in Colorado?

A draft land use bill for renewables

I got a copy of the bill from my state senator (Byron Pelton) and wanted to share.  It's linked below, and if you're a fan of local control, I've got some bad news.

It drastically alters it:  in an interesting contrast to previous Democrat bills, rather than setting a floor (you can be stricter than us, but no less strict), this one puts in place a ceiling (you will not be stricter than us).

I took a screencap of the legislative declaration (the part where the bill's sponsors, drafters, etc. tell us the purpose of the bill) and attached it as screenshot 1.  

I highlighted some of the wording that stuck out to me.  The state is tipping its hand here.  It's clear that what the they want is to make sure that they get all the renewables they need to supply the Front Range with the feel-good, "green" energy they've told voters to expect. 

And to do so, they're more than willing to step in on what has been mostly left up to locals.  

Don't worry though.  It will be a (as Will Toor testified when I wrote about this in the past)a "fair and consistent" approach.  I know this because it's repeated here and it was repeated earlier by Toor.  Repeating statements like a litany is one way you can spot talking points.  

Consistent might be accurate.  If the state puts in rules that define the most stringent you can be, yeah, it'll be consistent.  

Fair is another matter.  This is more a matter of opinion.  And with things like these I find myself asking, "fair to whom?" and "who decides?"

The bill language offers a clue.  It will be the state, likely the people in the Colorado Energy Office.  It's my understanding they were the main drivers of the bill.   See, for example, screenshots 2a and 2b.

Let's get specific here.  Look now at screenshot 3 for a picture of the proposed setbacks for wind turbines (there are rules for solar later in the document which I'll leave to you to look up if you'd like).

Take note particularly of the rules for what the state would have if you don't want wind turbines on your land but your neighbor does.  Seem fair to you?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Let's say it didn't seem fair and you wanted to see about changing it.  You know your recourse now, you talk to your local elected officials.  If his bill passes, those folks' hands might be tied.

There are many farmers and ranchers who welcome renewables as a way to help them earn some extra revenue off their land.  Probably for every one of them, there's one that wants nothing to do with panels or turbines.

The point here is not whether someone wants renewables on their land, the point is in how we balance the competing interests and desires of those two groups.  

The normal way this happens in this state is a mix of state rules and local decision making, with it being mostly local decision.

This is how it should be.  The local governments are closest to the people.  They live in the area.  The same area where the people will choose to live with renewables and transmission lines or be forced to live next to them.   


Do you suppose that anyone from the Colorado Energy Office will listen to your concerns?  Did they come to your county for a stakeholder meeting PRIOR to this bill to discuss ideas?  If the answer is no, how much care do you think they have for what you want?

Will anyone outside of your own statewide rep and/or senator listen?  You going to get the ear of a Front Range lawmaker, someone who probably couldn't even find your land on a map and mainly just wants renewables as long as they're "over there"?

Hell, go in and look over the bill and see how much more advocacy wildlife have for their interests than you as a local landowner do.  

Protecting local control, keeping your voice in the policy that you will live with so your interests are part of the discussion, is only fair.

This bill will do away with that. 

Right now there is no official bill and thus no way to track anything.  When there is one, I will update and try to speak up against this bill.  I hope you join me then.  

In the meantime, save the link below and send it to our county commissioners.  Tell them to get ready and start working against this abridgement of local control.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K9hZ31S7-FKzjt1078F9pykvoOUgjf5v/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=105405937749106967542&rtpof=true&sd=true

Related:

In the interest of fairness, I would like to point out a good idea from the bill in the post above:  some sort of financial surety for decommissioning of renewables. 

As current state law has it, oil and gas must put up money to take care of any well that might be abandoned after operations cease.  Senator Sonnenberg (from my part of the state and now my county commissioner) tried to run a bill requiring statewide rules regarding decommissioning and surety for renewables.  It was voted down by Democrats.  


Well, this draft bill has requirements for this (finally).  See the attached screenshot.  Glad to see it.

I contacted Mr. Sonnenberg and asked what Logan County's requirements were (Logan county put in their own rules in the vacuum of statewide rules).  I would like to compare what we have to the proposed requirements here.  When I hear back, I'll update.

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Are plant-based alternatives really better for the environment?

Kind of an unfair question to lead with because the answer is, as it often is, "it depends".  It depends on what you mean by better.  It depends on which alternative and alternative for what.  

You see, as is also often the case, alternatives are just that:  they are alternatives that have their benefits and drawbacks.

And, from what I can see, I don't think they're automatically less resource-intensive.

I got the three resources below for you (the first and third from AGPROfessionals--worth a follow).  I linked to them below should you want to explore in more depth.

The first two are National Library of Medicine (NLM) articles on the impact of various meat substitutes on the environment and the nutrient density vs. environmental impact of various "milks" (including dairy) respectively.  The third is a one-sheeter by the Beef Cattle Institute of Kansas State U.

Let's go in that order.


I want to call your attention to the "Highlights" section in this article because at first blush, it seems to go against what I'm will be saying here soon enough.  Keep reading.  If you do, you'll note that a more honest highlight (though not one they chose) would have been "It's complicated, keep reading."

Because it is.  Life is all about choices.  If you choose to grow beef, you will have one set of advantages and disadvantages.  If you try to replace animal protein with insect protein, you'll have a different set.  Same with replacing it with plant protein.  

In papers like this and the other one from NLM about milks, it's common to compare various foods according to their resource demands (how much water they use for example--more later on this)  and environmental impacts (estimates of, say, greenhouse gases produced).

The paper goes through quite a variety of different meat substitutes, but the best way to summarize quickly is shown in screenshots 1 and 2 attached.  

Screenshot 1 is shows the various impacts/resource demands for a whole slew of meat substitutes (and beef circled in red/blue) across a variety of studies.**  

This graph is really funky in it's layout, so let me walk you through it.  First, when you compare, you should only compare gold dots to gold dots, and blue dots to blue dots across.  The gold dots are the impacts for 1 kg of dry material.  The blue dots are impacts for 1 kg of protein produced.  In other words, gold tells you impact vs. how much stuff is made.  Blue is impact vs. nutrition.  When you look at the data I highlight in red, for example, you're seeing the impacts/resource use for 1 kg of dry beef.  The blue highlights are impacts/resource use to make 1 kg of beef protein.  

Screenshot 2 shows you something similar (in terms of gold and blues), but I believe this is for ready made foods (meatballs for example were mentioned).  Why there is not blue dot values for the beef, I'm not sure.  In this one, I would say the only fair comparison would be to compare gold to gold.

What do you see in both?  I mean besides lots of detail, dots, bars.  What you notice is that sometimes beef protein is higher, sometimes lower.  

That is the point.  That is exactly the point above.  Depending on what you're looking at, beef uses more resources, and sometimes it uses less.  It's not a question of better to me.  It's a question of what do you want to trade off.

Last thing I want to show you from this paper is a visual depiction of the uncertainty about the various meat alternatives and their impacts/benefits, especially the more exotic ones like meat from fungus or bugs.

Take a look at screenshot 3.  The paper's authors made an infographic that showed the relative amounts of evidence available for the impacts of the various substitutes and the amount of agreement among various studies on the impacts.  Both are graphed from "low" to "high" so to speak.  Anything in a box refers to the environmental impacts of the substitute, anything not in a box is the resources it demands.  

I showed you an example with soy.  Soy's resource demand and environmental impacts have a decent amount of evidence backing them (with the environmental impacts being better than resource demand).  They're pretty well known.  There is also a high amount of agreement among researchers on same (again, with the environmental impacts being higher).  A legend of the various acronym is in the text at the bottom.

I would say it's fair to think that anyone telling you with certainty that any meat substitute that lands in the lower 4 dashed squares is better, they're on shaky ground at best.

Looking at the second NLM paper, a similar approach was employed, though these authors looked at nutrients vs. greenhouse gas impacts for a variety of drinks.  You are welcome to read the paper itself.  Here I think the best summary is in screenshot 4.  Ranked by nutrients vs. greenhouse gas impact per 100 g, milk clearly comes out on top, at about twice the nutrient density of the nearest competitor, orange juice.  

Both of these  papers demonstrate something else that I think needs to be part of this discussion:  we need to not only consider the environmental impacts and resource use, we should also be discussing the relative nutritive values of the foodstuffs.

After all, is it a net benefit if we need to grow twice, three times the amount of lower-impact foods to equal the same amount of beef or milk?  I haven't seen numbers, but can't help but wonder if it's close to a wash.  

One last thing and that's from the third link below, the one-sheeter on water use for beef production.  Here it lists water usage per pound of meat for beef, chicken, and pork.  You will note that beef's is markedly higher.  

The reason I include this link (besides the above) is that you need to also remember to include the various types of water that are used in production when you talk about water footprint for any given foodstuff.

On an aggregate basis, beef does use a lot more water, but a large part of that water is water that comes as rain to water the crops/forage that feed the animals.  As the authors here have it this water (quoting) "require[s] no human intervention to use" and doesn't involve "removing water from its natural cycle" as opposed to the other water types which could be used by humans. 

I.e. it's not the same.  The water going to the cows is not taken out of the water that we could directly be using now.  An important distinction.

**This paper could probably best be categorized as a meta-study, an aggregate of other research into one place.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9936781/?fbclid=IwAR2kY7T9xlYG2oN-3a5ggLW3O_XqFb7fSUZWdEWx2E5nS3FKdTzZm0QKp9M#bib0048

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2924839/

https://ksubci.org/2020/11/16/does-beef-production-really-use-that-much-water/amp/?fbclid=IwAR3QInphYQMeo2XQPiFLgCByG1vNg2zYMew_yilRucfNa7l3OI_2pLRSzc4

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Involved in outdoor recreation in some way in Colorado?

Whether you're an angler, hunter, recreation enthusiast, or someone who uses public lands in some other way, take a minute and read through the Colorado Outdoors magazine article below. 

In it you'll find a link to Colorado's Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan.  


You'll also find a link to comment on the plan.  Comments are due by 2/28.


I'd highly recommend you read through it and send in comment if this is a passion (or a job).  Believe me when I tell you that the conservationists/environmentalists/animal-rights activists will.  


I've talked multiple times about making sure that conservative voices are part of the conversation in this state.  This is a prime example.  


If you read the plan and see a big concern in there that you think is worth sharing with us all, please do.  Add to the comments below.

https://coloradooutdoorsmag.com/2024/01/29/scorp-feedback-opportunity/