Extinction Rebellion Jan 26; avoiding malignant green growth; another public call for clarity on New Mexico energy reforms
January 15, 2019
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Previous letter (7 Jan 2019) and important postscript (8 Jan 2019): "Meeting in Santa Fe 5:30 pm this Friday Jan 11; why LANL cannot host a plutonium pit factory; will Governor Grisham’s energy policies help, or hurt?"
Previous Bulletin (#252, 1 Jan 2019): "Fundraising reminder; why LANL cannot be any kind of plutonium factory, in a nutshell"
Dear friends on our New Mexico activist list --
- We must mostly leave these issues in your hands.
All we can do here is to provide a different and we hope better framework for analysis and action. We can't for example track individual bills in the legislature, or lobby there. We trust you to think through what we are saying here, come to your own conclusions, and act.
Frankly, New Mexico has relatively bad outcomes compared to most other states because the state's people, including its leaders, are too passive. As Frederick Douglass said, we get precisely the level of injustice we put up with.
We can't add more hours of work here. We need you.
- Extinction Rebellion Day 1: January 26
The US and New Mexico governments are not going to respond adequately (or perhaps at all; there is no sign whatsoever as yet) to the climate crisis, under present political conditions.
Neither are most of our environmental organizations. Since Obama took office in 2009 we have seen the steady co-optation of environmental groups away from science and toward harmony with Democratic Party positions.
So we need to change those political conditions.
Please understand: more renewable energy does not mean fewer emissions of climate-destroying greenhouse gases, let alone declining atmospheric concentrations. Using much less fossil fuel is required for that, for starters.
That, in turn, will bring about economic "degrowth." "Degrowth," a euphemism, is certain (and more likely sooner than later) for other reasons, but in the meantime we are frying the planet.
What to do? End business as usual, because it is fatal.
We have signed up to join the Extinction Rebellion (XR) and we hope you do too. Call (505-265-1200) or write us. We are unaware of actions planned in New Mexico, but would like to be, so if you are planning something please let us know. We have 11 days to plan and organize before the January 26 Day of Action, and can meet or talk after work early-ish on most evenings. Family will be visiting this weekend.
We introduced XR to this list on 1 Nov last year. Here is the main (UK) link again.
- The Study Group joins 626 organizations in calling for strong climate action, including first and foremost a halt to fossil fuel leasing and a phasing out of fossil fuel extraction.
Which is required if nature and humanity must survive.
We thought you should know that we do not stand alone.
We see 350.org and New Energy Economy on that list (hurrah!) but not the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), or Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). It cost nothing to sign that letter (and accomplishes little), and we don't agree with everything in it. But the failure of so many Big Green groups to join is notable. In 2009 the big national environmental groups disposed of $1.7 billion in resources annually, and they dominate environmental discourse in Washington as well as New Mexico. But in 2010 they couldn't bring even a single Republican senator to vote for their deeply-flawed cap-and-trade policy.
In my (Greg's) opinion this article hits many of the most important notes perfectly. I think it should be widely distributed and discussed.
One difference: I do not agree with Mr. Cox about carbon taxes (which should be "greenhouse gas taxes," or "carbon-equivalent taxes," to avoid creating a methane loophole).
- Another op ed on energy policy
Here is another op ed (indented text) that is current pending publication (with comments below):;
Goals for state energy policy changes fall into two broad categories.
Most energy reforms aim to maintain and increase the quality of life in our communities and households. Rightly configured, such reforms have the potential to create not just thousands of jobs, but tens of thousands. We can build community solidarity, careers, and a more resilient infrastructure and society – if we hold to those goals.
Proposals based on utility-scale, investor-owned electricity projects will not achieve these goals. They will make New Mexico poorer and more unequal, not wealthier and stronger in the ways that really matter. Exporting renewable electricity is a terrible idea.
We need to be clear about this, because are in the midst of a social emergency. New Mexico was recently rated (again) as the worst state in which to raise a family. Better education is important but only part of the picture.
The second big energy goal is to help halt global warming before self-reinforcing feedbacks take over, delivering unstoppable global warming and mass extinctions – including, as would be likely, our own.
The timeline for action is extremely short. The required social transformations are dramatic. We are in an emergency, which threatens the lives and happiness of children today.
Halting global warming requires lowering atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations sufficiently, or else reducing the fraction of solar energy reaching the earth. Lowering emissions is not enough. [1]
New Mexico has the potential for world-class leadership in the fight against global warming. How? Only by cutting back our state’s oil and gas (O&G) production – which would have global effects. [2]
The GHG contribution of the O&G industry is so huge that cutting back production is basically the only way the state can lead, once coal use is gone. What we do with sustainable transportation, energy efficiency, and renewable electricity is important but smaller, slower, and secondary.
Eliminating coal is very important, if it is not replaced by gas. The global warming potential of methane supplied by fracking, evaluated over the crucial 20-year period ahead, is greater than coal. Strong methane regulation – which may not be feasible – would help somewhat but will never make gas a clean fuel.
Most oil-producing countries are in permanent decline. More will join. Oil discoveries have been minimal in recent years; “depletion never sleeps.” Since 2005, post-war Iraq and US shale oil released by hydrofracturing (“fracking”) have provided all the world’s net growth.
The largest US shale oil reserves are in the Permian Basin, a third of which lies in New Mexico. As goes the Permian, so goes the US. As goes the US, so goes the world.
If plucky New Mexico managed to kick its O&G addiction, we could go a long way toward waking the world from its fossil fuel nightmare. Conversely if New Mexico remains the third-largest oil-producing state, with or without methane regulation and notwithstanding all other energy reforms, this state will be a global-warming problem, not a solution.
We could start with a fracking moratorium, pending successful leak reduction. Or, elegantly, a dividend for all taxpayers supported by a hefty GHG (not carbon) fee. [3]
O&G revenue is an addiction, a resource curse [4], that keeps New Mexico from having to face the reality that we actually need a social contract, one that includes everybody. We are far from that, materially and attitudinally. We need to do much more than restore the $360 million/year fiscal loss created fifteen years ago by Governor Richardson and the legislature.
Our state’s twin emergencies are intimately linked. To solve either we must solve both, and energy policy reforms will play a big role – in success, or failure.
Notes to this (very condensed) op-ed:
In most renewable energy (RE) proposals for New Mexico, e.g the one offered by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which emphasizes increasing the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) without further specification, social values have almost no place. Few jobs will be created by their plan, which they admit.
To stabilize and build New Mexico communities, it is necessary to get beyond the ideas that
a) electricity should be cheap, which identifies people strictly as consumers and fails to notice that there might be net benefits to higher costs if those costs are income to producing communities, households, businesses, and local governments, or to community members and businesses in the RE industry;
b) electricity should be provided and distributed primarily by monopoly investor-owned utilities, which then absorb all electricity sales income, with the political results we see.
Maximizing the social benefits of RE (and of energy efficiency, EE) will strengthen the state and its communities against hard times (the current hard times, with worse coming), position New Mexico to lead in global warming mitigation, as well as help us adapt (to the extent possible) to what global warming cannot be avoided. Utility-scale investment does little or none of this.
EE investments are inherently distributed. Distributed RE, which costs more than utility-scale RE mainly because it creates more jobs, is necessary to match and amplify the social and fiscal benefits of EE investments at particular homes, businesses, schools, and government/tribal buildings.
Rapid build-out of distributed RE can be incentivized in various ways (e.g. buying the electricity at sufficiently-high prices, as Germany once did). The best approaches will maximize buildout in capital-starved situations (capital-rich situations will automatically take care of themselves), provide local ownership and control, and minimize unnecessary paperwork and delays. Investor-owned utilities (IOUs) need to be removed from the driver's seat. New Mexico has hundreds of thousands of solar-capable buildings.
There is nothing wrong with the rich RE resources of all the states within roughly 1,000 miles of us. New Mexico doesn't need to help them, or be an "energy mine." That would do absolutely nothing whatsoever good for New Mexico, or for them. Groups like UCS are applying a national "standard template" to New Mexico, without sufficient thought and without sufficient human or environmental values.
[1] This is not clear to many people. Building more solar and wind farms does not mitigate global warming. Only decreasing fossil fuel use, for the purpose of atmospheric concentrations, does so.
[2] Impossible to explain in a 600-word op ed, the net energy available from US oil, and the average quality of US oil (both in terms of heat content and the production of critical middle distillate products, e.g. diesel), are declining. "Oily stuff" is complicated and unpredictable but the bottom line is that oil availability and prices will not be stable, with major economic ramifications.
[3] A small tax and dividend will not be enough. I think the equivalent of $1/gallon of gas would be necessary, for starters. The dividend should be hefty enough to eliminate state income tax for most people of ordinary means. Obviously a GHG would apply to coal as well as to O&G. It's a big subject, but try playing around with the Carbon Tax Center's model here. Some famous Republicans support a tax -- too many to ignore if you want to get something passed, IMO. We are not endorsing their plan as-is!
[4] Our nuclear and military installations fall into the same category -- a curse -- for essentially the same reasons.
Thank you for your attention and solidarity,
Greg Mello, for the Study Group
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