Making The Future Accessible

Okay, as I am currently Solarpunk posting, let me talk about the topic that in regards to Solarpunk actually is worth critiquing. If you actually - you know - do interact with the community and the stories.

Because here is the thing: Solarpunk as a genre generally tends to be actually quite good about most of the base infrastructure. Most writers in the genre do actually think about how energy is produced and how the associated supply lines work. They think about how food infrastructure works. And how people get around. And how the internet works. They also do seem to have some thoughts at least about how waste management works - though admittedly that is often a bit less thought out other than "renewable materials" and "recycling". Not perfect in that area, but... at least some thought is there.

No, the big issue is health - and disability care.

Look, I am a disabled person myself. I cannot walk long distances on my own. I struggle with stairs. And I need to take 12 different medications. 9 of them daily, the other three in weekly or biweekly intervals. I need to see specialist doctors at least once a month - usually more often. And frankly: I still actually am still more abled than a lot of other people. I can still work. I can still travel with fairly little preparation. I can still do fun stuff without needing to overthink it. And while I do need my medication: I will survive if I am without any single one of them for a week. All of them for a week gone would be an issue. But some of my medications are at times hard to get due to international supply chains and... that is fine. I can live through that.

But others can not.

And this is an issue that a lot of Solarpunk stories just do not consider.

Accessibility in Solarpunk Worlds

So, here is one of the core issues: when most people hear "accessibility" they first and foremost think of wheelchairs, hard of hearing people, and blind people. And that is of course only a small fraction of people who are actually disabled.

We are on tumblr, so chances are y'all have been told about this just a bit. You likely know that people in a wheelchair usually can walk to some degree but might struggle with balance, or exhaustion, or other issues. Some people might be in a wheelchair on some days, and not on others.

You might also know that people with autism and ADHD and other neuro differences might just need environments that are not as bright, not as loud, and so on.

But chances are that other than this... you do not know much. And it is not your fault. It really is not. Because this is just not taught. And currently a lot of people kinda try their best to fully "other" the disabled people. So you do not think of disabled people as people who are largely "functioning" as society expects them to.

But yeah. Disability can have a lot of faces, and even the same disability can look completely different in different people.

You know. Not everyone likes to use wheelchairs. Not everyone who has lost a limb wants to use prothesis. Not everyone who is hard of hearing finds hearing aids useful. Not everyone with ADHD profits from medications.

And then there is the other big issue: cars.

Because a lot of Solarpunk conversation rightly criticize cars and the car centric infrastructure we have. But the issue is if we do not have car accessible infrastructure it also means that ambulances cannot access a lot of areas. And... those are kinda important.

And of course there also is just the additional bit that while I absolutely think that we should finally get away from car centric infrastructure. But some people will just need cars of some form. Because for one reason or another public transport, bikes and the like will not be working for them. And this is an issue that a lot of people engaging in Solarpunk just do not want to admit.

Petrochemicals and Medication

And then we have that one big issue. And that is petrochemicals.

Right now a lot stuff in our society is in some way or form tied to petrochemicals. So to oil. We take the oil out of the earth for fuel, but as we only use some part of it for the fuels, some part for plastic, and some parts for... other stuff.

And some of this other stuff is medications.

A lot of medications on the market right now go back to some chemicals that originates with the petrochemical industries. And some of those chemicals we right now cannot produce without earth oil being involved at some point.

No, this is not all medications of course. There is a bunch of stuff that is largely done without petrochemicals involved. Stuff that might be produced by fungi, bacteria, or - we have to remember that - genemanipulated animals. But even those medications currently at times still need some solvents or other materials either to work, or to be stabilized for longer than a few days.

And of course a lot of other things related to medicine are super dependent on Petrochemicals. Syringes are made of plastic. A bunch of other stuff is as well. And while for those maybe we might at some point be able to recycle that stuff into a good quality - but right now we are actually not able to do that.

A lot of people who disagree with anarchism or Solarpunk keep saying that the issue is somehow related to people no longer caring for disabled or sick people. But generally, I do not think it is a problem. Humans always have been taken care of one another. Medical jobs tend to be generally the kind of job people like doing - or would like doing if they were not constantly overworked and underpaid.

But one issue we need to keep in mind is... that we still will need to pump oil for the time being. Because otherwise people will die due to no longer being able to access life saving medication.

The Invisibility of Disabilities

One of the core issues with all of this is - of course - that disabilities tend to be treated like invisible within even progressive circles. Everyone is kind of aware that disability exists, but people who are not themselves affected often will just straight up ignore anything that goes past wheelchairs, blind and hard of hearing people.

Often enough, even among leftist people, there is also the narrative about "We will just heal everyone for good", not realizing that a) this is very unlikely, and b) that this is actually eugenicist ideology.

In Solarpunk people tend to actually think about most other infrastructure. Food, information, energy, water. That tends to be taken care of. But medical infrastructure? Infrastructure for emergencies? That is often the kind people do not think about enough.

And again: yes. It is highly likely that if we had a world in which we were not working ourselves to death, where we are not constantly stressed, where our basic needs are being taken care of, and where we have community, a lot of acquired disabilities would be more rare. We know that people who have community and less work stress will be much, much less likely to develop cancer or heart disease.

But there are still disabilities that will be there from birth. There will still be disabilities in old age. People will still have accidents. And people will still suffer infectious diseases. And yes, some people will still have cancer and stuff.

So, ideally any Solarpunk story should account for that. And for how they are supposed to get care, and medication, and pretty much anything else needed to survive.

Now, you can go to Península Valdés and find that the whale population there is growing year after year, people can see them from their windows. In Iberá, where yaguaretés were extinct for over 70 years, there's now a population of 35 and growing, after being reintroduced just five years ago. As for rainforests?

We've becoming very, very good on restoring them. Natural environments, when given space and time to heal, can return to that they were. And after all, all natural enviroments are managed by human societies. It is up to us to implement a good management, un buen gobierno.

I firmly believe our children and grandchildren will see a restoration of Earth like never before.

(yes this entirely for corporate profit)

Cut and paste the docket number to put in your response if you remember. You can comment anonymously if you want.

The Oregon Zoo has some sample arguments you can make.

Since OP didn't explain what's actually changing (lots of things) here's a simple explanation of one of the Big Ones.

One of the biggest changes is a proposal to remove the ESA’s Threatened Species Blanket Rule (FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029). The Blanket Rule is extremely important because it automatically extends the same protections given to endangered species to all newly listed threatened species, quickly providing prohibitions on harming, killing or trading the species. If the Blanket Rule is rescinded, species-specific rules would have to be enacted, imposing additional procedural delays and uncertainty at the most critical time for the species' survival. And with more and more species in danger each year, that’s a risk that we as a country cannot afford to take. 

Also, @why-animals-do-the-thing / @animalphotorefs this seems like something that your reach might help with, and that's relevant to your blog(s).

If you run into issues, try turning off your VPN if you have one, in case it's getting annoyed that you're not "in the U.S.".

If you need a template, I'm putting one I got sent at work under the cut. (But check out the Oregon Zoo link, too! Or better yet, write your own! Unique and individual comments catch more attention than copy-pasted ones!)

I’m going to give you a little bit of information about the process that’s happening here, why it’s happening, and how you can best contribute to protecting the Endangered Species Act. You can skip it by scrolling to the red text, but you’ll be best set up to comment and help if you know some things about what’s happening first, so please stick with me. I promise to be as simple and jargon free as possible.

First, and to catch people's attention as they scroll, here's two red wolf sisters: a species the ESA actively preserving. This is who we're doing this for.

To clarify one thing: they’re not trying to totally repeal the ESA, the entire law, they’re looking to roll back regulations implementing it/enforcing it to what was being used in 2019. This is still bad! Very bad! But a thing that’s important when dealing with legislation/regulation is precision in the language we use.

Okay, so here’s what you need to know. This is part of what is known as the “notice-and-comment” rule making process, which is federally mandated. This happens with the implementation of regulations to enact new laws, or changes to the interpretation of laws. Laws like the ESA, once passed, are delegated to various federal agencies and departments to enact and make happen, and they do that by deciding what regulations need to exist to fulfill the text and intent of the law. This change to the ESA is happening because one of the earliest executive orders from this administration “directed all departments and agencies to immediately review agency actions to identify those actions that potentially impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources, and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, consider suspending, revising, or rescinding agency actions identified as unduly burdensome that conflict with this national objective.” So, as @sweetfirebird said, literally go figure out what laws and regs and protections they can interpret differently, put on hold, or trash for the energy sector. Fucking gross.

This “notice-and-comment” process is the process with which all these federal agencies go about exploring changing regulations. It’s a formal process that is specifically designed to allow stakeholders to have input on what happens. Good news: in the ESA, the public is literally a stakeholder! It’s written into the law that any “personal” (basically an individual or a group of individuals) can sue the government for a violation of the law. This is actually historically the prime enforcement mechanism of the ESA. Which means you, as an American on tumblr reading this, have absolutely valid standing to go tell the feds to knock this shit off. And with the way the “notice-and-comment” process works, they actually have to take your argument into account. (Yes, even though we know this admin is a piece of shit and dgaf). Here’s why.

A “notice and comment” process has four major steps.

Agency issues a notice of proposed rulemaking. That’s what you’re looking at in the first link @sweetbirdfire shared. They have to describe what the rule they want to make/change is and explain the legal authority for the rule.

The public must be given an opportunity to participate in a written comment period. That’s what you’re being asked to do - submit a comment before the comment period is over on the 22nd.

The agency must “consider all relevant, timely-submitted comments. If it decides to issue a final rule, the agency develops the regulatory text along with a preamble explaining the rule’s basis and responding to all significant issues raised in the comments.”

Final rule is published.

Okay, so why did I jump to a direct quote from federal documents in the third bullet point? Because that’s the really important shit. When federal agencies move forward with rulemaking after a public comment period, they are required to consider and response to all significant issues raised. And that is why you should write your own comment if you can.

It’s really common for organizations encouraging people to leave public comment to ask people to send in form letters. It’s easy, it takes no time or real work, it shows a lot of general public support on the issue, and they can quote the comment numbers when they’re lobbying.

But! What I’ve been told by serious professional people who work with regulatory agencies is that all those form letters only have the functional weight of a single comment during the “notice-and-comment” process. If 100 people only bring up the same significant set of issues, that requires far less time and work for the agency to respond to than even 20 people writing in with their individual concerns. I’ve seen follow-ups on comment periods where they actually count how many people raised issues on a single topic or concern - but the form letters only counted as one “comment” because they were the exact same thing.

And while the political agency head probably wants to fast-track this process of changing the regs to let the feds tear up whatever the fuck they want, a “notice-and-comment period” is a really good way to gum up those gears. There are still people in lower-level positions who do this daily work and I expect that they’re opposed to this and will go through the whole process like they’re been trained to. Under normal administrations, an overwhelming number of concerns raised during comment periods have stalled the creation/change of specific regulations for a decade. This is a process that works best when as many people as possible participate, and it’s detrimental to our interests as invested members of the public that that isn’t more widely known or the process understood.

So! What does that mean you should do here?

Write your own comment if you have the time/spoons.

Literally, write it in your own words, rather than using the form letters provided. If you make it a “different comment” it has to be considered separately and your concerns on the topic will be given more weight. Even if you just stick to the topics the Oregon Zoo offered: to be clear, they’re really good ones.

But, you’ll have even more impact if you can tie it to specific concerns for you. It takes a little more work so I don’t expect everyone to do this, but if you have some specialized or local knowledge that can be relevant, this is a great time to drop that in. Tie the concern to endangered or threatened species in your specific community, or an ecosystem that you know companies might want to pillage.

Your comment doesn’t have to be super well written or perfectly edited. It can be in language about as casual as you’d use in a tumblr post (with punctuation, though). This isn’t something you’re turning in for a grade - it’s raising your hand to say hey, I object! You’re not a major advocacy group or professional org, you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to tell them how you feel. That being said. Public comments are public record. You can submit them anonymously but don’t include identifying information.

Here’s a link directly to the comment portal. While the site has a text box embedded in the page, you can also submit a document/file containing your comment.

https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0039-0001

Comments close at 11:59 PM EST (4:59 GMT) on December 22nd. We have less than five days to get more comments in. I’m really not kidding when I say every unique, individual comment makes an impact. Let’s do this.

Like I spent years having to come up with a solution to get therapy dogs into a series of residence halls. Why years? Because we had to decide who got to stay and who got to leave: the people who needed therapy dogs or the people with severe allergies to animals. Who got the alternative housing? 

Things like fidget toys might seem great for some disabled people but having them in the room could be distracting/overstimulating for others. The same goes with stimming. It can’t be helped but neither can the anxiety that another person in the room feels as they watch/hear it. Additionally, something like a weighted blanket might immediately calm one kid down and send the other one into a panic attack due to the claustrophobia it causes. (*Points to myself*)

Every Metro bus in New York City has a series of seats at the front that can be lifted up to accommodate people in wheelchairs but if I’m in one of those spots then someone with a cane/walker has to journey even further to sit down.

The flashing lights of a fire alarm are there to help deaf/hearing impaired but if they’re not properly timed, they can also cause a person to have a seizure.

The worst part about all of these is that there is rarely a concrete solution that makes everyone happy/safe. And I’m not here to offer any because I don’t know them. I’m just here to remind you all that as you’re taking your education/health classes, as you’re reading your textbooks, as you’re preparing to go be an advocate, just remember that there is rarely ever such a thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to advocacy and that something you do that can help one disabled person might actually hinder another.

it's an accessibility tool i made for myself because i needed it, which basically lets you focus on one sentence at a time as you read large blocks of texts (books, articles, etc.). it offers different highlight styles, some of which use gradients to help guide your eyes from the start of the sentence until the end. you can move forward and back pressing the buttons or using ALT + left and right arrow keys if you use it and you find it helpful please tell me about it so i can have the motivation to keep improving it. i love knowing people use my tools

https://addons.mozilla.org/es-ES/firefox/addon/sentence-stepper/

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sentence-stepper/cfiappnihemjkaaepefjfofagcobikek

The first gif shows the tool cycling down the paragraphs, from sentence to sentence, in a thick yellow highlight.

I love her, she's great. Her recipes are friendly for both physical and/or intellectual disabilities. And her 5-year-old helps her cook. 🥰

Link to her YouTube channel:

From the article:

I'm at a Guide Dog center here in Australia. This is a legend, a tactile and Braille map of the bathroom, right outside the door.

We zoom back out while she continues, with large hand gestures,

Do you want to know what the hardest part of my day is, as a blind person? 'Cause it's probably not what you expect. It's not the fact that I can't drive, though it's not ideal. It is the fact that public bathrooms are all designed differently. Do you know how stressful it is, when I have to pee in public on my own? My boyfriend leaves me at the door of the women's room, and I have to walk into the great unknown. Is there going to be a line? Where in line am I supposed to stand? When I find the toilet - well, first off, when I'm with my guide dog I need the accessible stall, so I have to feel my way to the big stall. Then, when I get there, hopefully it's open. If not, I stand. I wait. I get in. I have to find where is the toilet paper? Where is the toilet? I have to hope to God it's clean 'cause I can't see it. Then I have to find the flusher - is it a pull, is it automatic - who knows? Then I have to find my way to the sinks. Where is the soap? Where is the dryer?

She turns back to tap excitedly on the sign.

Hello! We have found the solution.

She starts telling us what the sign says as her fingers skim over it.

So, up here it says 'female and ambulatory toilet map', and then it tells me 'A-T' means it's the 'ambulatory', which means it's the larger accessible stall. 'T' means 'toilet'. Um, down here we have, like, 'D' means 'dryer'.

She moves down to the map, showing us the location of the three stalls along the back wall.

So then I go here, and I know that this stall would be the one that my guide dog and I would use - 'cause it's the 'A-T', the bigger stall. Next to it, the two ones to the right are both normal sized toilets.

She goes back to the top left corner of the map to follow the left wall towards the front of the room. Halfway, she gets to,

Down here we have 'D', so this means it's the dryer for drying my hands.

She continues down, and at the front of the room takes turns tapping two squares for 'B', and one between them for 'S'.

We have 'S' and 'B', which means I now know: if I'm at the sinks, the soap is in between the two basins.

We zoom back out, but then she remembers something, so we go back to look at the opening at the bottom right of the map.

I want this! ... Ooh! And I know, look, here I walk in the door, so I immediately orient myself: toilets are right in front, I would go far left. Right next to the door is gonna be my sinks.

We zoom back out so she can finish,

Like, this, this is a game changer! This is a game changer. I want these everywhere. This is my plea. My next campaign. How to make toileting more accessible to everyone.

link to PDF

carbon emissions put out by lawn mowers (and other devices like leaf blowers). Lawn mowers produce significantly more greenhouse gases per hour of use than cars, and majorly contribute to smog.

Fertilizers get into bodies of water and cause algae blooms, converting all the diverse water plants to homogenous green slime.

Pesticides kill fireflies, bees, and all sorts of other beneficial insects, and many can kill or harm fish, birds and even humans.

Herbicides can have negative effects on the wrong targets too, but they are also causing common agricultural weeds to evolve resistance faster, increasing our dependence on pesticides.

Watering lawns does waste a lot of fresh water.

Lawns replace areas that once could have contained 100+ plant species with monocultures of frequently invasive species. Butterflies can't find host plants this way. Bees can't find food. Thousands of insect species rely on specific plants for food, and no other plant will do. A huge amount of the land is taken up by these wastelands.

Lawns also create dead, compacted, lifeless soil that is hard to grow other things in or near. The root systems of turf grasses are not robust enough to allow water to penetrate in. No matter how much nitrogen and phosphorous you dump on a lawn, it will still be lacking in the organic matter needed to create lush, absorbent dirt.

Dirt is supposed to be full of fungal mycelium. Scientists have discovered recently that the vast majority of all plant species are dependent on a network of symbiotic fungi attached to their roots for 80% of their phosphorous needs and 90% of their nitrogen needs.

Yes, this means that when you put a fungicide on your lawn, you've just nerfed that plant's ability to absorb nutrients by up to 90%. And you've also devastated its ability to absorb water, because plants are partly dependent on their fungi to get water out of dirt.

But fungicide isn't the only problem. Every plant in a natural environment is attached to multiple species of fungus, and most fungi are attached to multiple species of plant (though some are specialists). Trees literally use this system to send nutrients to other trees. We discovered recently that trees in deserts in California can survive extreme drought because they're attached to fungi that can break down rocks and extract water from the rocks.

If you don't have a good variety of plant species and rotting leaves and sticks and stuff, it doesn't matter how much fertilizer you put on it, your soil isn't "healthy" because it's not alive.

Vegetation that has been cropped extremely short doesn't hold in water, so a heavily maintained lawn is likely unnaturally dry for your climate, and a flower or bush in the middle of a lawn without tall grasses, shrubs and weeds nearby is getting pounded by the sun much harder than it's meant to handle.

Yeah, gardening isn't hard, most native plants are falling all over themselves to grow, it's just that the standard suburban backyard is ridiculously hostile to life.

Of course at this point you may be wondering

"What do I do instead?"

Well, here you go:

Stop weeding, spraying and fertilizing. Seriously. Stop it!! Stop it!! Chemical intervention in your lawn traps you in a vicious cycle of creating problems that need to be solved with more chemicals.

"Weeds" are a perfect example. Plants commonly considered "weeds" are adapted to take over areas that have been cleared out of other plants. Many "weeds" are actively harmed by the fungi that other plants depend on, meaning they can ONLY thrive in disturbed or devastated areas. The harder you work to eliminate biodiversity in your yard, the harder nature is going to bomb your yard with weeds.

By the way, google the "soil seed bank." Seeds can stay dormant in soil for years or even decades. If you want a "weed-free" lawn, get ready to apply herbicides for the rest of your life.

Mow less often. You really can't go wrong with this one.

Don't try to grow grass where grass doesn't want to grow. Lots of shade? Try moss. Extremely dry? Try drought-adapted plants. See what wants to grow there and let it do its thing.

It's fine to have a lawn area that you actually use. But if no one walks or plays on a stretch of your lawn, it should be something else. A wildflower patch, a stand of prairie grasses, some large shrubs, a grove of trees.

By the way, the idea that shrubs or flower beds are higher maintenance than lawns is wrong. The neat thing about native species is that once they've gotten settled, you literally just do nothing.

People think flower beds are high maintenance because people almost always underpopulate them. They think that there should be big spaces of mulch in between each plant. In a full sun flower bed that's actually filled to capacity, you shouldn't be able to see the ground. If your plants aren't babies anymore and there's still space, more plants.

if you live in an area that was once forest, PLEASE, plant some trees, and not just one tree. Trees are somewhat like guinea pigs, actually, they don't want to be alone. They send each other nutrients through their roots and screen each other from wind damage.

By the way, the "mature spread" of a tree as told on websites means when you plant it by itself. Trees can generally be planted 6-10 feet apart and be perfectly happy, they'll just grow taller and straighter instead of spreading out. (Look at pictures of forests.) HOWEVER large trees like large oaks should really be 25+ feet from structures and septic tanks

(Trees pop up by themselves in lawns. Constantly. Search for them in a woodland biome and you will likely find baby oaks and maples and other cool guys.)

Trees introduce competition for light into the areas you plant them, helping eliminate the "weeds." You know how fast your lawn grows up and gets weedy when you don't mow it? Yeah, that's partly because it's getting a CRAP TON of sunlight dumped on it with reckless abandon.

A. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/02/25/2025-03014/removal-of-national-environmental-policy-act-implementing-regulations

B. Click on the green rectangle in the upper right corner ("SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT") .

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Some real talk for the new year, about where we now stand, and what the next years are going to look like. (Still ends on a "be hopeful or else" kind of note, but definitely gets into some heavy truths about the meaning of recent events.)

End of 2025, we should have 10x the offshore wind as we did at end of 2024, due to one project that broke the bottleneck for building.

The bottleneck was lack of a specific type of ship operating within US. It's currently working off Virginia. The prep work for similar project off Connecticut is currently underway, and as soon as Virginia is done, that ship switches up here. And is likely fully booked through 2030 with similar items.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Intiative has been operating for 15 years, reducing co2 power plant emissions in new England and midatlantic. They did such a good job they hit their 2020 goals in 2018... and set new more aggressive ones for 2030, at least some members shooting for zero power plant emissions by 2030.

Thats 10 members, plus Virginia just joined so just starting that process Pennsylvania and North Carolina may join with next year or two, once legal challenges solved.

RGGI used model of taxing CO2 emmission via permit and permit auction money goes to direct utility assistance for low income folks, weatherization & energy efficiency to reduce demand, and green power projects.

Those green projects are all small, but lots of em. So no one big solar farm, it's 20 warehouses with solar panels. So invisible infill you don't SEE happening. But that's been chugging along for 15+ years and will keep going because it's a state, not federal, program.

Justice40 under the Biden administration prioritized historically undeserved and economically depressed areas for funding for climate resiliancy projects and green projects. It's been in place since 2017 so a lot of money assigned to it that's still working through system and all those will complete in next few years.

Trump could reprioritize how money for those programs is allocated, but it is a lot of very rural areas so he will get push back. Noooo, we need that money! And they do.

Since they're very poor and undeserved areas, it means you get a much bigger improvement vs better off areas. Swapping out a coal plant from 1940 vs one that upgraded in 1990 is a way bigger potential improvement!

The US military has been putting lots in alternate energy for last few years entirely due to security of being reliant on oil they have to get places, leaves supply lines vulnerable. So they will continue adding capacity for foreseeable future. And anybody complaining about it being "woke nonsense" can get told off about how many fuel convoys get struck in conflicts and how much better on-site solar and wind is than generator use.

So there's good things in process that likely can't be stopped. So even if us fed stopped new project funding entirely (unlikely), there's lots in process that will complete in next few years and continue building capacity.