Kevon Martis: Common-good Foe of Industrial Solar and Wind

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 27, 2020

Land and Liberty’s Peter Sinclair openly admits when asked that they are funded by DTE Energy, Invenergy, APEX “Clean” Energy and (from memory) ESA Solar. (Correct me if I am wrong.) Two of those entities have substantial fossil fuel investments. Did Sinclair or Land and Liberty disclose that? Doesn’t that make them truly guilty of what they falsely accuse me? (Martis, below)

Climate activists and renewable-energy apologists cannot fathom their opponents are anything but shills for the fossil-fuel industry. Rather than check their premises, the modern Malthusians pretend and even distort without care.

Welcome to the ‘cancel culture’ when anything goes in the service of an agenda and emotions.

One target for the intellectually corrupt ‘renewable’ energy side is Kevon Martis, a tireless foe of government-enabled, beauty-and-wildlife desecrating industrial wind turbines and solar arrays. So much infrastructure, so little energy, Martis explains. And these politically correct energies have to rely on natural gas to be grid-reliable, anyway.

Martis has been recognized at MasterResource before. His effective fight against windpower in Ohio was documented in “Citizen Martis Draws Ire from Big Green (countering wind power shoestring by shoestring)” (October 30, 2018). Other Martis activism has been covered in these posts. [1]

New Inaccurate Smear

Recently, this appeared:

To which I told Kevon that the fossil-fuel check was in the mail.

Here is Martis’s rebuttal at Facebook.

So the solar interests in Lenawee County have produced a vicious website falsely tying me to fossil fuel interests, among other claims. A response is in order:

1. I have not and do not receive any support from any energy interest of any kind. This includes fossil fuel utilities or the Koch family, etc.
2. My role as a Senior Policy Fellow at E&E Legal is unfunded and I take no direction from them on any matter. This can be confirmed by my colleagues there, Tom Tanton and Craig Richardson.
3. The bogus claims about my role as zoning administrator [ZA] are laughable. For instance, they claim that I have a conflict of interest regarding proposed solar development. That is impossible on the face. Why? During my tenure as Deerfield Township ZA, there has been no solar application of any kind for me to process. So it is impossible for there to be a conflict of interest. Further, a ZA has no vote on these matters. The ZA is a functionary who simply processes applications and reports relevant language in the zoning ordinance to the planning commission. At most, the ZA makes a staff recommendation. And since I have no financial interest in any such deliberation, I have no conflict. But there can be no such deliberation absent any application.
4. They claim that the ZA is supposed to support their energy rights. That claim shows their utter ignorance of the Michigan Zoning Enabling Act and the role of the ZA. The ZA can only interpret and apply the local zoning ordinance. Period. Whether that ordinance is friendly to a business development or not is not relevant to the ZA’s job. My personal opinion on the ordinance itself and how it regulates various business enterprises is irrelevant once an application is received.
5. There is fossil fuel money at play here, however. Local solar developers will seek to either sell their proposed projects in toto to DTE or CMS or sell the energy production to them. In either case, the solar developer will be receiving millions of dollars from these fossil fuel utilities. Furthermore, local renewable boosters “The Land and Liberty Coalition” is an offshoot of the Michigan “Conservative” Energy Forum. Land and Liberty’s Peter Sinclair openly admits when asked that they are funded by DTE Energy, Invenergy, APEX “Clean” Energy and (from memory) ESA Solar. (Correct me if I am wrong.) Two of those entities have substantial fossil fuel investments. Did Sinclair or Land and Liberty disclose that? Doesn’t that make them truly guilty of what they falsely accuse me?

As my late friend Mike McCann said to me in 2010, “They can only bite you in the ass when you are in the lead”.

I am not running a race and do not care to “beat anyone”. But I am committed to protecting prime agricultural land from encroachment by irresponsible development as the Lenawee County Land Use Plan instructs.

And if I am winning that battle, it is good for the entire county.

———————————

[1] Previous posts by or about Kevon Martis at MasterResource:

• Enough! Martis Responds to Sinclair re Industrial Wind (March 5, 2018)
• Wind Siting Rules: Kevon Martis Testimony to the Ohio Power Siting Board (June 9, 2016)
• Citizen Martis to Ohio Lawmakers: Repeal the Renewable-Energy Mandate (January 27, 2014)
• Testimony Against Industrial Wind Power: Martis before the Ohio Senate and House PUCs (January 8, 2014)
• Dear Michigan: Why Wind? (natural gas is better all ’round) (March 13, 2013)
• Defeating Big-Government Renewables in Michigan (Prop. 3’s “suicide by gluttony”) (December 6, 2012)