Greg Mello<\/p>\n
4 January 2019<\/p>\n
(A shorter version of this blog post appeared in a Guest Editorial in both the Albuquerque Journal here<\/a>, and the Santa Fe New Mexican here<\/a>.) The incoming administration may not sufficiently grasp either the richness of opportunity, or the urgency of the dangers inherent in the climate, energy, and economic crises breaking upon us.<\/p>\n It is all too easy to see energy issues through a sterile, growth-oriented, neoliberal lens. Disaster lies that way: a few may profit, but New Mexico will lose.<\/p>\n New, community-based energy policies are key elements in what could be New Mexico\u2019s last chance at social development.<\/p>\n We need a humane, democratic vision. Government and citizens, not corporations and financiers, need to invest in that vision and own it, from households to businesses to co-ops, villages, cities, school districts and counties.<\/p>\n Localize, don\u2019t globalize. Democratize, don\u2019t corporatize. Small is more beautiful and fruitful than ever. Less, as always, is more.<\/p>\n Unless locally financed, owned, built, and managed \u2013 unless designed to meet demand in our own communities and industries but not elsewhere \u2013 unless social goals remain uppermost, renewable energy will neither help New Mexico nor lower greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n Would an increased renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for electricity generation, from the present 20% to 50% by 2030 as requested by the governor and environmental groups, lower emissions, create jobs, and strengthen communities?<\/p>\n Not much, no, and no.<\/p>\n Last fall, New Mexico electric utilities produced, purchased, or simply took from customers enough renewably-sourced electricity to provide 22.5% of generation. Yet after 15 years of an RPS, only about 2% of New Mexico\u2019s overall<\/em> energy production is renewable. With a fourfold increase in oil production over the past decade, New Mexico\u2019s energy portfolio is getting browner, not greener.<\/p>\n New Mexico Democrats and Republicans alike are celebrating this, because it means taxes won\u2019t need to be raised for now. Will any of our environmental groups withdraw support for Democrats because of this? No. They apparently don\u2019t care about winning on climate, let alone build communities. They apparently just want to play the game.<\/p>\n Electricity accounts for less than half of total energy consumption. Other energy uses are provided almost entirely by fossil fuels. That may change, but very slowly. At present, New Mexico energy consumption is about 90% from fossil fuels, not counting imports of food and goods.<\/p>\n Were New Mexico to magically reach 50% or 80% renewable electricity production tomorrow, the state would still be a major contributor to climate collapse, both from growing fossil fuel production (which itself requires a great deal of energy) and from consumption in wasteful buildings and transportation.<\/p>\n Few jobs will have been created. Once utility-scale renewable energy is built, even fewer jobs remain. New Mexicans, with such a policy, will not even inherit the wind, or the sun. Those would be privatized and sold for a mess of cheap energy porridge and environmental votes.<\/p>\n Tax incentives, not the RPS, have driven most renewable energy job creation, which has been small in any case. Over the past 15 years we have added about 200-250 renewable energy jobs per year, about 0.02% of total employment each year.<\/p>\n We could<\/em> make ten times that many jobs, if that were really the goal. And it should be. An RPS won\u2019t do that.<\/p>\n It hardly needs to be said that without bipartisan support based on employment and other social benefits in specific districts, and objective community successes, little worthwhile will happen.<\/p>\n To lower emissions it is necessary to produce and consume less fossil fuel. We must tax, prohibit, and regulate. Greenhouse gas taxes (not just carbon taxes) can be a superb policy backbone with strong conservative appeal. Unless returned entirely to citizens they will be politically and economically dead on arrival.<\/p>\n We use vastly more energy than anyone has ever used, vastly more than is good for us, vastly more than the earth and sky can support, and vastly more than we will be able to afford or obtain once the sweet spots are fracked and the cheap money dries up. That day is coming, and soon.<\/p>\n Helping Phoenix and Los Angeles grow \u2013 or New Mexico \u2013 by adding renewable energy to a US economy 80% dependent on fossil fuels, which is what Governor Grisham proposes, will only add to delusions and greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n Long-distance transmission lines are generally not environmentally sound. Nothing which facilitates growth in energy use, as these proposals will, can be green or socially conscious at either end of the wires.<\/p>\n We could<\/em> use energy production and efficiency, sustainable transportation, and education at all levels to build skills, careers, and resilient communities. A long policy menu is available.<\/p>\n We could<\/em> foster empowered, self-respecting citizens, the sort required for what we used to call \u201cdemocracy.\u201d We could<\/em> be producers, stewards, mayordomos<\/em>, not just consumers \u2013 which is to say, peasants.<\/p>\n We could<\/em> opt for a different kind<\/em> of prosperity, one that puts people and the living landscape over profits for banks and hedge funds.<\/p>\n We could<\/em> cut our energy use by say a fourth relatively easily, creating thousands of accessible jobs while lowering emissions, improving our building stock and quality of life, and saving money.<\/p>\n We could<\/em> maximize solar production on most public buildings and offer not just some, but sufficient<\/em>, incentives for a massive build-out of distributed and on-site solar power.<\/p>\n Instead we are poised to entrench existing monopolies, build inappropriately-scaled projects with substantial out-of-state labor, and continue suburban sprawl that will plague us forever. We do little for energy efficiency. We offer few transportation alternatives.<\/p>\n If we let government give away the sun, the wind, the land, the oil and gas, and yes the water, what will be left here? Think about it. Nuclear weapons and waste. Military bases, until the sands sweep over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Greg Mello 4 January 2019 (A shorter version of this blog post appeared in a Guest Editorial in both the Albuquerque Journal here, and the Santa Fe New Mexican here.) The incoming administration may not sufficiently grasp either the richness of opportunity, or the urgency of the dangers inherent in the climate, energy, and economic… Read More »Will Governor Grisham\u2019s energy and climate policies help, or hurt, New Mexico and the climate?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ZtEt-9M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":620,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lasg.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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