OPINION: New Mexico is no climate champion

As the Trump administration has systematically dismantled our nation’s climate and environmental protections, New Mexico’s leaders have been celebrating state oil and gas policies as bastions of climate progress. The facts tell a different story.

Explosive permitting has driven a fracking frenzy in the Permian Basin that has transformed New Mexico into a petrostate. It is now the country’s second-largest oil producer and fifth-largest producer of gas.

By 2030 the fossil fuel sector is on track to pump out 30% more greenhouse gas emissions than in 2005, and it will account for 40% of statewide emissions (up from 24% in 2018), according to projections from the New Mexico Environment Department.

Fracking wells and pipelines are also spewing methane — a climate super pollutant more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide — into the air.

State officials often point to a handful of rules and regulations on the fossil fuel industry as proof of the state’s climate action. But dig past the surface and it’s clear there’s no there there.

For example, take New Mexico’s methane waste rule, which is supposed to prevent oil and gas operators from venting and flaring methane gas. It’s described as a victory for curbing the potent, planet-heating gas, but the policy doesn’t work as advertised. It contains massive loopholes, relies on self-reporting from operators and is hardly enforced.

The ozone precursor rule is no better. The rule requires updates to oil field technology and operating procedures to reduce ozone precursor emissions. But it suffers from the same problems of loopholes and self-reporting, and most oil and gas sites are violating it.

Since these two rules took effect, methane emissions and ozone levels in oil fields — which were already above federal health limits — have only increased.

Meanwhile, the state allows the oil and gas industry to suck up more and more of our fresh water at a time when our rivers are running dry. And policymakers are pushing forward with a proposal to buy the industry’s toxic fracking waste and use it as “produced water,” even though the science is clear that this toxic stew is unsafe for people and the environment.

New Mexico’s leaders are doubling down instead of heeding the unequivocal warnings from the world’s scientists that we must rapidly decline the use of fossil fuels to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.