Igrew up knowing that when you had extra money, you put it under a bed, stashed it in a book or a clock, or, if there was enough of it, it went into a savings account at a bank.

It hadn’t occurred to me that my bank account could be contributing to the climate crisis until I learned that since the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015, 60 of the world’s largest banks have invested $5.5 trillion into the fossil fuel industry. And they’re using our money to do it.

When we deposit our paychecks, the money doesn’t just sit there. Generally, banking institutions will use our money for investments and loans to other individuals and businesses, including fossil fuel companies.

So I realized that one of the levers that I could pull to fight climate change would be to take my money out of banks that invest in fossil fuels. And I could use my skills as a journalist to figure out where to put my money instead.

One thing I learned in my research: It’s no surprise that I didn’t know my bank could be using my money for fossil fuel investments.

“I worked in financial services, and I didn’t even know where my money was going,” said Yejide Olutosin, director of the Business Climate Finance Initiative at Impact Experience, an organization that works with companies to assess their carbon footprint and find ways to reduce it. “So you imagine just the everyday person with the everyday chores and family and obligations. They don’t have the time.”

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Sabin 33 #25 - Are wind projects hurting farmers and rural communities?

Posted on 22 April 2025 by Ken Rice

On November 1, 2024 we announced the publication of 33 rebuttals based on the report "Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles" written by Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger & Samuel Lavine and published by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School in 2024. Below is the blog post version of rebuttal #25 based on Sabin's report.

Fact-Myth box

Wind power offers farmers the opportunity to earn additional income from leasing out their land, while also growing crops or grazing livestock.1 As a result, many farmers view wind turbines as beneficial for their farmland and the local community (Holstead et al. 2016, Mills 2018). And wind farms leave ample space for continued agricultural use: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that about 98% of the area in a typical wind farm is available for agriculture or other uses.2 The New York Farm Bureau has stated that "[w]ind turbines are geared towards continued farming activities, because wind turbines are typically spaced one acre apart."3 Moreover, "[l]ivestock are unaffected by the presence of wind turbines and will graze right up to the base of wind turbines."4

The additional income from lease payments can help farmers keep their land in production1 (also Holstead et al. 2016, Mills 2018). One 2017 University of Michigan study found that farmers with turbines tend to invest twice as much in their farms as farmers without wind turbines (Mills 2018). In addition, property tax payments from utility-scale wind projects provide revenue to rural communities for investing in schools, roads, and bridges.1

Farmers with turbines also appear more confident that they will continue to own their farms at the time of death. In the University of Michigan study, survey results showed 80% of those with turbines had a plan of succession for their farm, while only 62% of those without a turbine had a succession plan (Mills 2018). The researchers concluded that this difference was likely due to added income the wind turbine provided.

Wind farms can likewise contribute to agricultural productivity. A 2019 study of Gobi Desert wind farms, from China’s Zhejiang University, found that turbine proximity made local vegetation "more metabolically efficient, with higher community coverage, density, and AGB [aboveground biomass]."(Xu et al. 2019) Recent research from Iowa State’s Agronomy department posits that related benefits to agricultural yields might stem from increased photosynthesis capacity as turbines draw additional carbon dioxide out of the soil.5 Further studies suggest that wind turbines may even increase crop yields on neighboring farms, by minimizing harmful temperature extremes in the surrounding area (Kaffine 2019). Moreover, while recognizing that wind farm installation can contribute to short-term soil degradation, a 2020 analysis from Brazil’s Universidade Federal do Ceará concluded that these installations produce impacts less intense than those "caused by agricultural use and rainfall in the same period" and that local farmers found it possible "to reconcile agriculture and wind power generation without major repercussions on rural lots."(Sobrinho Junior et al. 2020)

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