Last week the stacks at the San Juan Generating Station came down after operating for more than 50 years and emitting more than 12 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, a symbol of the change that is possible when we take action to protect our health, our earth and the people we love.
Also last week Bloomberg reported that Lea County is now pumping upward of 1 million barrels of oil and gas per day, and Eddy County is projected to hit that same milestone by September next year, as New Mexico drilling singlehandedly pushes US oil and gas production to the highest in the world:
“Since COVID, the Permian Basin has been the only significant source of supply growth,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas energy economist Garrett Golding said at an industry conference in Hobbs, N.M., earlier this summer. “And since Permian growth is centered in New Mexico, technically that means the world oil market depends on what happens in New Mexico.”
NMOGA President Missi Currier is quoted in the article threatening that “If oil and gas stopped in New Mexico, within a decade we would be a Third World country.” This threat is a familiar refrain from oil and gas peddlers, who continue to push the false narrative that the only way to lift ourselves out of poverty is to destroy our home, to pollute our air, land and water until the earth has nothing left to give and the climate is so unbalanced that our children will struggle to breathe, to eat and to survive the unbearable heat.
Leadership requires vision, the capacity to reject this false and limiting mindset, and the courage to reject the threats and enormous payments from oil and gas to protect the land and the people we love. It requires rapid investment in what we know already works. If you follow climate news, you know that we do not lack the ability to transition to clean energy - distributed energy, solar, wind, geothermal and battery storage can provide all the energy we need! - we lack only the political will to sacrifice corporate profit, to break the hold of private monopoly energy utilities, for the long term benefit of all living things.
New Mexico must find a way to throw off the chains of these extractive industries and envision an alternative economy that prioritizes people and planet above corporate profit. We are not a poor state - New Mexico now has the 33rd largest sovereign wealth fund in the world - and we can choose to invest that fund to ensure a livable future. We are part of the wealthiest nation on earth, a nation that can afford to subsidize states and workers in a managed Just Transition that centers equity, sustainability and community care. All we require is the will to live.
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