{"id":292647,"date":"2017-02-20T08:20:25","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T15:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=292647"},"modified":"2017-02-20T08:20:25","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T15:20:25","slug":"the-answer-to-our-states-woes-is-not-to-drill-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2017\/02\/the-answer-to-our-states-woes-is-not-to-drill-more\/","title":{"rendered":"The answer to our state\u2019s woes is not to drill more"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>My parents Maria and Eduardo, both Mexican immigrants, settled in Lake Arthur way before I was born. A community that sits in the heart of southeastern New Mexico, it remains my sanctuary, the small town that helped define me.<\/p>\n

\"Angelica

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Angelica Rubio<\/p><\/div>\n

Southeast New Mexico gave me a home where I fell in love with the dry and sometimes cool air, and the sweet smells of the farms that surrounded me. Falling asleep near an open window and under the bright stars, listening to voices hundreds of miles away that only AM radio could transmit late into the night.<\/p>\n

My mornings were spent listening to the sounds of my parents talking — my mom preparing tortillas hot off the comal before my dad set off to empacar y recojer la alfalfa<\/em> on the farm. Hours later, I would be welcomed with smiles from my closest of friends. After hours of public schooling in my tiny classroom and crowded hallways — with red, black and white draped all around — I\u2019d walk to the gravel parking lot, where my mom would pick me up.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d make our daily afternoon drive south to Yates Petroleum in Artesia, where I would sit and wait at the head of a large mahogany boardroom table, with smells of old coffee being erased by the smells of glass cleaner. It was the sound of the roaring vacuum cleaner in the hallway that always told me it was almost time to go home and start the day over all over again.<\/p>\n

A small and tight-knit community in southeastern New Mexico where hard work, perseverance, and audacious courage are required to survive, Lake Arthur is also the backdrop to a vision I have always had for my beloved state of New Mexico. A vision that lets New Mexico reach its economic potential, that holds onto its important history and culture, and gives every New Mexican family a chance to succeed, even if they live in a place like tiny Lake Arthur.<\/p>\n

But as the first half of my first New Mexico Legislative Session comes to a close, I\u2019m faced with a narrative that finds too much comfort in nostalgia: romanticizing the \u201cold days,\u201d and being resistant to a new future we must lead in.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen and lived through the boom-and-bust oil and gas economy of New Mexico. I\u2019ve seen our state grow its Land Grant Permanent Fund to one of the largest in the country, reaping tremendous benefits from oil and gas royalties. I\u2019ve seen the neighboring communities of Lake Arthur get flooded with temporary workers when oil booms, some even camping in the streets or doubling or tripling up in one-bedroom apartments just for an opportunity to make a decent living, even if it\u2019s just for a few months — or if they\u2019re lucky, a year or more. I\u2019ve heard the whizzing of new diesel motors and smelled the fresh tar on the ground.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve also seen too many of the bust years — young and old New Mexicans alike packing up their gear to go back home, with hopefully some money saved up in their pockets and the hope that there will be work again to pay for the home they just mortgaged. I\u2019ve heard those diesels power down as their owners wait for the global market to make production profitable again, with many heading east to Texas to work on more lucrative operations, all the while our people here suffer.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen that despite having a robust oil and gas industry and one of the largest land grant permanent funds in the country — $15 billion — New Mexico remains at the bottom of every list that indicates a good quality of life: No. 51 in child poverty. No. 50 in overall poverty.\u00a0No. 50 in working-age women in poverty. No. 44 in income inequality ratio. No. 34 in unemployment. No. 48 in high school graduation rates. No. 49 in higher education attainment. No. 31 in the gender wage gap.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear that the answer to our state\u2019s woes is not to drill more. The oil and gas industry would have you believe that by lining their pockets with more profit, by having taxpayers foot the bill for more corporate subsidies or give-aways to increase production, we all somehow stand to gain. Dishonest legislation introduced this session that would have opened up many of our state\u2019s public lands to new mineral development was masked under the guise of creating a permanent endowment for children, but at what expense?<\/p>\n

The future of oil and gas in New Mexico calls for more fracking, oil rigs and refineries that would\u00a0have a major impact on our environment, water, climate and the health of our kids and families. A recent map produced by the New Mexico State Land Office in support of Senate Bill 182<\/a>\u00a0proposed lands for drilling near or in cities, urban centers and communities where there are\u00a0high populations of kids and families.<\/p>\n

Yet at the same time, New Mexico\u2019s untapped wind and solar power have the potential to supply all our state\u2019s electricity needs and sell millions of excess Gigawatts to other markets. Given that the primary human activity accelerating climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, it makes both economic and moral sense to stop romanticizing the \u201cold days\u201d of oil and gas and invest in a future of clean energy.<\/p>\n

While oil and gas will surely be a mainstay of New Mexico\u2019s economy for years to come, let\u2019s at least start trending in the right direction and invest in the infrastructure to help us develop our state\u2019s clean, renewable energy.<\/p>\n

Change is imminent — I see it today painted on the horizon from my mother\u2019s window in Lake Arthur. Let\u2019s embrace it.<\/p>\n

Angelica Rubio<\/a>, D-Las Cruces, represents District 35 in the N.M. House of Representatives.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Mexico\u2019s untapped wind and solar power have the potential to supply all our state\u2019s electricity needs and sell millions of excess Gigawatts to other markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[3329,284,119,107],"class_list":["post-292647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-2017-legislative-session","tag-climate-change","tag-energy-policy","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}