OPINION: Extractive industries have too much influence

I was the first successful publicly financed candidate for the Albuquerque City Council in 2007. That was because I was worried about the private money behind our elections and our policy making. And this 60 day legislative session it’s crystal clear that extractive industries are paying to play.

I was thinking about that private money when I saw Ernie C de Baca’s op-ed claiming that asking the oil and gas industry, that makes billions of dollars from our ancestral lands, to reduce their climate pollution would be a burden on small businesses. The Hispano Chamber should be asking what the climate crisis will cost just us and our families, not what it will cost oil and gas companies, whose profits are astronomical.

The Trump Administration has exited the Paris Climate Agreement. Congress is joining him in dismantling a methane emissions waste fee that would help pay for the technologies that could help industry keep our natural resources in the pipelines. And at the same time the administration is pushing the misguided idea that drilling more supply of oil than we need is good economic policy. Industry can afford the pennies on the dollar; it’ll cost them to be good neighbors.

So I guess I already know who is behind the Hispano Chamber’s claims. But I wonder if its members do. As a city councilor and a multi-generational New Mexican I know what’s at risk when we face drought, extreme heat and weather so extreme that our energy systems can’t handle it. Collapses of our energy systems are caused by extreme weather made worse by the climate crisis (FYI).

Our outdoor workers are facing dangerous heat with emergency room visits from heat exhaustion ever increasing. Our water resources are dwindling to the extent that water rights are meaningless because there’s not enough water to serve existing rights. Our county air quality is on the brink of exceeding federal limits both because of transportation pollution and extreme forest fires.

Oil and gas can well afford to step up. Our New Mexico small businesses deserve that minimum respect. Big industry is using its exclusive access to make it seem like their cost is our cost when in reality fossil fuel executives can pay their fair share for common sense pollution reductions in our state.

Hispanos in this community know when we’re being sold a bill of goods. So let’s see the check and who is paying.