The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance is proud to be a partner in a winning team for a national clean energy prize, the only winning team from Colorado. The SOLVE IT Prize will help launch an innovative project to clean up a former coal mine in Delta County, destroy climate-harming methane pollution and create jobs. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, it is made possible through climate funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. 

When the government works, it can benefit innovation and the environment even in a remote mountain valley of a few thousand people. But when addressing climate change becomes a political puck to be batted about, rural Colorado suffers. 

Remote places and rural spaces are already under-resourced. An inadequate transportation network is made even more vulnerable due to escalating impacts from climate change. As heat related-injuries rise and insect-borne diseases like West Nile are spread more quickly over an expanding range, people in rural places, both resident and visitor — who are outdoors more and where health care services are often poor at best — are put at higher risk. 

Luckily in the last Congress progress was made in funding climate action, including the Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Now, that funding is reaching into places like the North Fork Valley. But even those first steps might be in jeopardy if backward-looking politicians reverse progress made. With the political season here and heated rhetoric in more favor than finding solutions, the risk is real. Climate realists in Congress must defend the gains that have been made from ill-founded rollbacks and attacks. 

The value of these projects should not be understated. The Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Law have spurred new and innovative development on clean energy and other climate solutions. Recently, Latitude Media, which covers climate technology, noted that investment banks appreciate these landmark pieces of legislation for the certainty they provide, writing, “The IRA-provided regulatory clarity has given investors and developers a longer runway than ever before, which means opportunity to innovate.”

And it’s not just investors who respond to certainty. It allows communities to better plan for projects as well and for businesses to develop around changing economies and needs. Western Colorado has already benefited significantly from climate action funding enacted by the previous Congress. This includes water projects to boost efficiencies and drought resilience, clean energy and transportation funding, and new programs to build up a conservation workforce. 

Looking at our history, western Colorado still relies on projects funded with smart federal investments made 100 years ago or longer. This includes projects built by the original Civilian Conservation Corps established by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, and major projects like the Gunnison Tunnel, which put the Uncompahgre Valley into irrigated agriculture in 1909. Investments made today can likewise bring decades of enduring return. 

Moreover, there is an intrinsic fairness in ensuring that ample funds get to rural places. In the North Fork, we may be about 9,000 people, but we are home to Colorado’s most productive coal mine. Legacy pollution from 120 years of coal mining is a fact, and methane venting into the atmosphere is a climate risk and a threat to public health too. A recent article in the Daily Yonder, which covers rural issues, reported how greenhouse gasses being produced in many rural places are emitted to provide for urban and suburban Americans. 

Politicians talk about how much they value “flyover country.” But in the waning days of this Congress, make no mistake: cutting climate and conservation funding will hurt rural places, not lift them up. Cutting funding will keep rural America under-resourced and it will make it harder for people to innovate solutions that are best suited for their communities. 

The Colorado Farm & Food Alliance is eager to help make the Delta County coal mine project a success. But any limits on what can be done in the space of rural climate action is not due to a lack of need, creativity or capabilities. Limits are mostly set intentionally or through neglect by those who wield economic anxiety and thwart action for personal or partisan reward. 

Current federal climate funding should be preserved and more should be made available to communities, including in rural Colorado. Congress should not cut funding but should continue to support projects, solutions and practices that are innovative, beneficial and effective. 

While significant steps were taken in the last Congress, the current one has not followed suit. But that may not yet be the worst of it. 

This progress already made is critically important. It must be defended and must only be the start. Colorado Farm & Food Alliance urges elected leaders to heed this call, secure the climate funding in the IRA and Infrastructure Law and work to expand, not shrink, these opportunities for all American communities. 

Pete Kolbenschlag lives in Delta County and is director of the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance and a long-time rural advocate and climate activist. 

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