Tate: Rural Energy Activism of the 1970s
In Rural Revolt: Power Line Protests and the Alternative Technology Movement in the United States, 1970s, author Ryan Driskell Tate (Global Energy Monitor, History PhD) revisits three historic powerline protests in the US to demonstrate that rural protestors, by resisting capital-intensive technological growth in the countryside, actually helped advance renewable energy politics and challenged the “utility consensus” of the American electric power industry.
The largest powerline protests of the 1970s unfolded in Minnesota, Appalachian Ohio, and upstate New York, where tens of thousands of “bolt weevils” threatened to cut down powerlines, resisting capital-intensive technological growth that they felt ransacked the countryside for the sake of the metropolis. In this article, Tate traces the stories of Alice Tripp, a former Republican dairy farmer turned outspoken advocate of alternative energy; Louise Young, a farmer and science writer; and other activists focused on intentional alternatives to energy technologies.
This work uncovers the long history of rural dissent. Pushback against utilities in the 1970s ranged from academic scholarship condemning the new energy infrastructures, to the creation of activism groups focused on legal change, to groups of people literally tearing down the infrastructure. Tate argues that the physical expansion of metropolitan America, and the rising consumer demand for electricity, actually revived, rather than tempered, resistance to sprawling energy infrastructures.
In sum, Rural Revolt provides one historical perspective on rural activism against corporate energy. Tate seeks to shed light on topics historians may otherwise neglect, including the legacy of these powerline revolts and how they created new ways of thinking about large-scale rural infrastructures. Overall, Tate expands on the discussion of alternative energy technology in the US because he argues this movement is incomplete without acknowledging the thousands of farmers and rural people who drove corporate energy issues into the public sphere. In many ways, these protesters helped kickstart the national conversation about alternative energy technologies which have evolved into some of the most notable protests today, such as those against the Keystone XL pipeline.
