This week, President Biden’s nominee for secretary of the Interior, New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland, is up for confirmation in the Senate. Haaland, a self-described “progressive,” and a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, would, if confirmed, become the first Native American to head Interior. The Department manages approximately 500 million acres of surface land, or about one-fifth of the land in the United States.

The agency’s work is of interest to all Americans because it oversees more than 400 National Parks, from Yellowstone to White Sands. However, the department is of particular importance to Westerners, as more than 90 percent of the lands it manages are located in the Western United States.

The nomination of Haaland makes a certain amount of political sense for President Biden, allowing him to place a Native American in a position of leadership over Interior’s vast network of Native reservations. These reservations, including the Navajo Reservation in Northwest New Mexico, remain among the deepest pockets of poverty in the country. The fact that no Native American has ever managed those reservations is indeed worth remedying.

But Interior is a large department with many lands of varying purposes, and Western resource-intensive states including New Mexico have already seen the Biden administration act in ways that will do significant harm to their economies.

At Interior, Deb Haaland would be a cheerleader for Biden’s early anti-energy policies and would likely look for opportunities to expand upon them. She has taken radically anti-fossil-fuel positions throughout her political career. In 2016, prior to being elected to Congress, Haaland traveled to North Dakota to cook food for the protesters demonstrating against the Dakota Access Pipeline. She stayed in the camps for four days that September.

In May 2019, the newly minted congresswoman told The Guardian, “I am wholeheartedly against fracking and drilling on public land.”

Are Haaland’s positions and opinions based on sound science and history? In a 2019 Los Alamos Monitor story, Haaland claimed that “climate change in the U.S. started when Europeans arrived and started killing the buffalo.” Considering the numerous, dramatic changes that were a feature of the climate in prehistoric North America (and everywhere else on this planet), Haaland’s understanding of environmental forces is a bit off.

Given her radical views, it is not surprising that Haaland has been a strong supporter of the Green New Deal. The ambitious plan put forth by Represenative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and others would cost trillions in subsidies and lost economic activity. Among the plan’s radical proposals is a mandated shift to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and an increase in the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent.

On day one, the Biden administration pulled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. While this pipeline won’t directly affect energy-producing states, the cavalier approach to the permit raised red flags. Shortly thereafter, the Biden administration placed a moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal lands. If confirmed, Haaland would be a staunch defender of such policies.

Haaland’s home state, New Mexico, is particularly impacted by what happens at Interior. The state has the third-highest Native American population in the U.S. and also happens to be the state most financially dependent on energy produced on federally managed lands within its borders.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, a ban on federal oil and gas leases could cost New Mexico 62,000 jobs, reduce state revenues by $1.1 billion, and reduce oil and gas production within the state by nearly 50 percent.

With Haaland’s nomination up this week and Biden already taking an aggressive anti-energy stance, it is ironic Haaland wasn’t Biden’s first choice for the job.

In fact, according to several New Mexico media outlets, Biden initially offered the position to New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. On December 2, media outlets reported that Lujan Grisham had been offered the top job at Interior but turned it down. Lujan Grisham has never stated publicly why she refused the job, although she is just halfway through her first term in a “blue” New Mexico where she likely expects to be reelected in 2022.

As has been the case since the early days of Biden’s run for the White House, identity politics loom large for him. The president seemingly had the Interior secretary set aside to be filled by a Western, female, minority Democrat. A few weeks after Lujan Grisham turned him down, Biden settled on Haaland for the post.

The case for the slot at Interior being based purely on demography is buttressed by the fact that Lujan Grisham and Haaland have very different views regarding federal-land management. While both are New Mexican females (one Hispanic and one Native American), they exemplify opposite wings of the Democratic Party on energy.

From 2013 to 2019, Lujan Grisham represented the same Albuquerque-area congressional district as Haaland does now (Haaland will relinquish the seat if confirmed), and took a practical, moderate view on energy. This moderation is notably reflected in her 2015 vote to repeal the ban on crude-oil exports. She was one of just 26 Democrats in the House voting to repeal, with 153 of them voting to keep the ban in place.

Lujan Grisham continued to express moderation on energy issues when she moved into New Mexico’s Governor’s Mansion in 2019. During her time in office, she has expressed strong support for the state’s oil and gas industry and even said she’d consider asking for a waiver in case of a federal leasing ban.

As a governor concerned about her state’s economic and financial interests (and one who enjoys having oil and gas generate anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of her state’s budget), Lujan Grisham has attempted to placate environmentalists in her political base without doing serious harm to the state’s most important industry. Based on President Biden’s early energy policies, Haaland seems to make a better fit for the administration.

Senator Steve Daines (R., Mont.) has announced his opposition to Haaland’s nomination. Montana’s junior senator signaled he would not only vote against her confirmation, but also attempt to block her nomination from advancing.

“I’m deeply concerned with the Congresswoman’s support on several radical issues that will hurt Montana, our way of life, our jobs and rural America, including her support for the Green New Deal and President Biden’s oil and gas moratorium, as well as her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline,” Daines said in a statement. Is that enough to stop Haaland from taking her radical policies to Department of the Interior? We should all hope so.

As if New Mexico students didn’t already face serious challenges, see this quote from the New York Times (which, to their credit has been pushing for schools to reopen). 

Unfortunately, you can’t embed the map here, but as of Feb. 22, New  Mexico schools are among the least reopened in the entire nation, a situation that is problematic for our State and its future. According to the Burbio data:

New Mexico schools are 21.3% open;
Arizona is 68.6%;
Utah is 90.2%;
Colorado is 77.1%;
Oklahoma is 67.5%;
Texas is 90.8%.

Whether these states spend more or less than New Mexico on K-12 and whether or not they have expensive pre-K programs, every other state in the region is blowing the doors off New Mexico. Of course, our State’s largest school district, Albuquerque Public Schools, has already punted on the entire 2020-2021 school year.

The Rio Grande Foundation provided testimony to the House Judiciary Committee yesterday evening as it considered House Bill 166, a bill banning ghost guns and 3D printing. A ghost gun is a term for a typically homemade or improvised firearm that lacks commercial serial numbers, making these firearms harder to trace.

There are laws already in place to prevent criminals from obtaining access to firearms. The bill also circumvents existing regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Furthermore, the bill’s intentionally vague and broad language and definitions will hamper continued advancement of 3D printing technology, which has many useful applications in industries like healthcare.

During the allotted 60 second window of testimony, the Foundation’s arguments were based on the unfair treatment of the 3D printing industry and how this legislation would negatively impact thousands of New Mexicans that would become criminals overnight.

HB 166: RELATING TO CRIME; CREATING NEW CRIMES RELATING TO FIREARMS; PROVIDING A PENALTY

This bill is seeking to do too much and will cause confusion. The unintended consequences of this legislation includes criminalization of an extraordinary number of New Mexicans that might not otherwise realize that they have broken the law.

A very particular example of “other code that may be used to program a three-dimensional printer” includes the mandatory Microsoft Windows print spooler software package. This software is included on all major distributions of the Microsoft Windows Operating System and is in the presence of many homes, whether the inhabitants possess firearms or not.

So… people that:

Have no firearms experience;
Have never held a firearm;
Do not own a firearm;
And have no intention of ever exercising their second amendment right;
But have a Windows computer in their home would be guilty of violating this new firearms law.

We can all agree that 3D printing has many useful applications. But passage of this bill will create disincentives that prevent continued advancements in this technology and in software development in general.

Now is not the time to enact this legislation as this bill exists in a state that is not ready for consideration by this committee. On behalf of the Rio Grande Foundation I urge the committee to table the bill.

Included here is the specific portion of the legislation subject to this interpretation:

“It is an offense for a person to distribute digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions stored or displayed in electronic format as a digital model that may be used to program a three-dimensional printer to manufacture a firearm, firearm frame or receiver or other major component of a firearm to a person in New Mexico who is not a federally licensed gun manufacturer.”

During the discussion portion of the committee hearing, the bill’s sponsor, Representative Tara Lujan, and her expert witness, Andrew Karwoski, the Deputy Policy Analyst with Everytown for Gun Safety, could not or refused to answer Representative Bill Rehm’s direct question about whether a ghost gun has ever been recovered from a crime scene in New Mexico.

The fact that Albuquerque Public Schools has refused to reopen its doors to students for the duration of the 2020-2021 school year means (under Gov. Lujan Grisham’s COVID 19 rubric) that students at APS schools won’t be able to play sports. This led to protests over the weekend.

Should APS students be able to play sports? Should they be allowed to go back to school? The simple answer is YES to both. For the duration of COVID 19 the Rio Grande Foundation has urged policymakers to maximize individuals’ ability to decide how much risk they are willing to tolerate in going about their lives (or taking COVID precautions).

Ultimately, the problem here is one-size-fits-all policies that put policymakers in charge of decisions for which they simply do not have the capacity to make basic tradeoffs. The one-size-fits-all component transcends COVID. It has been a harmful feature of the government education monopoly for decades.

Of course, private schools have been open throughout the COVID situation. They have both a financial interest in what students and families want (as opposed to what unions want).

In meetings scheduled to start at 1:30 this afternoon, several legislative committees will hear bad bills. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hear SB 66, which caps interest rates for small installment loans at 36%. This cap would force loan providers to be much more selective with whom they serve, meaning that those who most need this type of loan would likely not be able to access them. The House Commerce and Economic Development Committee will hear HB 110, which would gradually raise the minimum wage to $15. The House Judiciary Committee will hear HB 20, a paid sick leave mandate; HB 166, which prohibits home assembly of firearms; and HB 193, an update to the state’s red flag law.

All webcasts can be accessed here. You can join the Zoom meeting for public comment for the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee here and for the House Judiciary Committee here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to SB 66, HB 110, and HB 20 and will speak in opposition to HB 166 and HB 193.

The bad ideas keep coming, and we keep fighting them! Tomorrow, the Senate Tax, Business, and Transportation Committee will hear the gas tax hike bill we have written about before, SB 168. On Monday, the House State Government, Elections and Indian Affairs Committee will hear HB 9, the Climate Solutions Act. Also on Monday, the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee will hear a minimum wage increase bill, HB 110.

You can access all the webcasts here. If you would like to give public comment, you can join the Zoom meeting for HB 9 at 8 A.M. Monday morning here. The Commerce and Economic Development Committee starts at 1:30 P.M. on Monday, and you can join the Zoom meeting here. If you would like to give public comment on SB 168, follow the instructions here before 5 P.M. on Friday evening.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to SB 168, HB 9, and HB 110.

On this week’s Tipping Point NM interview Paul sits down with Christian Robey, Vice President of External Affairs at the Media Research Center. The Center focuses on anti-conservative media bias and the Rio Grande Foundation is part of their Free Speech Alliance, an organized conservative response to media and tech bias.

The discussion includes Rush Limbaugh’s legacy in alternative media, the genesis of MRC, ways in which media and tech firms influence elections, and how citizens can push back. This episode covers an especially informative and very timely issue.

With the exception of Board member Peggy Mueller-Aragon, the Albuquerque Public School (APS) board is full of union-endorsed advocates. Concerns about what the unions think as opposed to what is best for our children is what caused the Board to keep students out of their classrooms for the duration of the 2020-2021 school year.

1. More APS students will fall behind after over a year of in-person schooling having been lost. Of course we won’t have great metrics to understand just how much they are losing anytime soon because the State will likely skip its big standardized test again this year;
2. The “real” question all along is what this decision means for this fall. Will APS and its very cautious teachers be willing to return to school this fall? Only time will tell, but it would seem that no matter what happens with COVID 19 the likelihood of 5 days a week in-person learning is slim;
3. The large group of parents who want their children educated in person face some difficult challenges. Obviously THIS school year was always going to be an issue, but the 2021-2022 school year and what it looks like is now in-doubt. There are private schools of course and in terms of charter schools, it would seem that if they are chartered by the State they may have more flexibility than those chartered by APS. A list of charter schools by chartering authority can be found here. 
4. For athletes in APS this decision has got to be devastating. To be led on for most of the school year and for the Gov. to dump the decision in the laps of districts and for the District to make this decision has got to be extremely frustrating and saddening for these young people.
5. Rio Rancho schools are moving forward with their reentry plans. Parents who want the best for their children have to be considering picking up and moving if they have the means to do so.

Tomorrow the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee will hear HJR 6, which mandates legislative involvement in extending emergency declarations after ninety days, and HJR 7, which would allow state school funding to go to private schools and families that choose to home school. In addition, the Senate Tax, Business, and Transportation Committee will hear SB 168, which would raise the gas excise tax by an additional $0.05 over several years.

Both meetings are scheduled to start at 1:30 P.M. You can watch the hearing webcasts here, or join the House committee Zoom meeting for public comment here. To give public comment on SB 168, please email scorc@nmlegis.gov with your name, the entity you represent, the bill number, whether you support or oppose the bill, and your email address before 10 A.M. Thursday morning.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in favor of HJR 6 and HJR 7 and in opposition to SB 168.

With so many serious issues facing New Mexico children (even before the Pandemic), we need REAL educational choice desperately in our State.

A small group of education reform activists is meeting with a goal of changing that. Paul Gessing, President of the the Rio Grande Foundation will be speaking about the dire need for education reform to that group on Monday, February 22nd in Albuquerque.

The event is sponsored by the New Mexico chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP) which is located at: 2808 Central Ave. SE in Albuquerque. Paul will speak for about 30 minutes starting right at 5:30. You can find out more by contacting Edwin from AFP at: 505-313-3290. Zoom MAY be available if you are outside Albuquerque or are unable to make it in-person.

On this week’s podcast, Paul interviews Zachary Fort of the New Mexico Shooting Sports Association about gun rights in the 2021 legislative session.

There are several bills listed below that could impact YOUR gun rights in New Mexico. Paul and Zach discussed what is happening and what can be done about it.

A few specific bills discussed are listed below:

1) HB 102 Creates a committee under the Department of Health to study gun violence, Sponsor Rep. Gail Chasey

2) HB 193 amends 2020’s “red flag” bill; original bill allows police to execute search warrants for any reason (purely civil), allows police to directly ask for a warrant to search for guns, Reps. Joy Garratt and Damon Ely

3) HB 166 Ban on homemade firearms, Rep. Tara Lujan

4) SB 224 Mandates so-called “safe storage” of guns, but also could limit youth gun training, Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez

New Mexico schools have been closed for too long, but when Gov. Lujan Grisham made her surprise announcement that schools could open to “hybrid” learning on February 8, most New Mexico school districts immediately got to work to get students back into their classrooms.

As the Albuquerque Journal recently noted, more than half of New Mexico school districts are back in classrooms for hybrid learning or more, but not the State’s largest district, APS. That needs to change right away.

The APS school board is meeting tonight starting at 5pm to discuss school reopening. You can watch the meeting here. You can sign up to speak during the meeting here.

You can email the School Board your comments, and questions at boarded@aps.edu  and you can call board members at 505-880-3729.

The unions have dominated the school reopening discussion and have a great deal of power over both the APS School Board AND the Biden Administration. It is important that strong majorities of concerned citizens weigh in and support school reopening. Several board seats are ALSO up for election this fall.

Tomorrow the House State Government, Elections, and Indian Affairs Committee will hear HB 9, the Climate Solutions Act, which would create a brand new bureaucracy to address climate change and promote a “green” economy.

The committee meeting starts at 8:30 A.M. on Wednesday the 17th. You can watch the webcast here or join the Zoom meeting for public comment here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to HB 9.

We hope we’re moving the right direction, but obviously a shift backward and yet another closure could harm restaurants.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller says we won’t get to Green until summer. 

CDC director had said schools should reopen regardless of teacher vaccinations, but the Biden Administration’s union-friendly politics got in the way.

According to ABQ Journal: 47 districts currently open for hybrid at elementary schools. And 41 of the state’s 89 districts had secondary students on campus through that mixed learning approach.

But opening was not mandated and Albuquerque Public Schools and Santa Fe Public Schools are among the districts that are teaching virtually for now despite the governor’s recent action.

Will school open “normally” this fall?

The State has asked the federal government to skip standardized testing.

Discussing education and the pandemic, the UNM Lobo athletic department budget has been devastated by the pandemic and shutdowns.

Paul and Wally discuss the good, bad, and ugly of New Mexico’s 2021 “virtual” session.

An anti-fracking bill SB 149 was heard over the weekend and passed its first Committee. The bill heads to Senate Judiciary Committee next.

Washington/NM anti-energy policies will harm the US economy w/o helping the environment.

Texas windmills have frozen due to cold weather. 

Paul and Wally discuss HB 4, New Mexico’s Civil Rights Act. 

Is the DOJ settlement with Albuquerque causing crime to increase?

Committees will hear two particularly bad bills, HB 236 and SB 224, tomorrow afternoon. HB 236 would establish a public bank operated by the state government and used by the state and local governments. SB 224 creates new rules around firearm storage and whom firearm owners may permit to use firearms they own. The rules and definitions in SB 224 are very vague and would hamper law-abiding citizens’ ability to share their knowledge and passion even with members of their own families.

The House Commerce and Economic Development Committee will hear HB 236 in a meeting starting at 1:30 P.M. The Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee will hear SB 224 in a meeting starting 30 minutes after the end of the senate floor session.

Webcasts can be found here, and you can join the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee Zoom meeting here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to both HB 236 and SB 224.

In New Mexico, when politicians talk about “diversifying the economy,” they usually mean “finding new taxes in order to spend more money.”

That’s partially because we have so many state and local government workers (let alone federal employees and contractors). Even a global pandemic can’t stop New Mexico from growing as the map below from The Washington Post shows.

While most other states saw reductions (often major) in state government employment, New Mexico’s already-bloated government workforce grew by 4%. That is tied for the fastest growth in the nation.

Adding insult to injury, while their numbers grew, the Legislative Finance Committee in New Mexico’s Legislature planned to give pay raises to state government employees in the budget currently being discussed in Santa Fe. Gov. Lujan Grisham gave fat pay raises to her inner-circle although (to her credit) the Gov.’s budget DOES NOT have broad based pay hikes.

(Albuquerque, NM) – New Mexico’s free market think tank, the Rio Grande Foundation, is pleased to announce the addition of two new members to its board of directors.

Our first addition is David Hampton of White Rock, NM. Hampton ran for the Legislature in 2020 and stated that RGF was instrumental in providing him with data and analysis on important issues, which served as the foundation of many of the opinions he expressed in public. Now that the campaign is over, Hampton noted that RGF’s role is even more important, as RGF continues to try to shape culture and worldview in support of the next election cycle.

Hampton is retired from LANL, having served as a cost and schedule analyst for many years in support of project and program management.

Tamara Olive is a Client Executive, Vice President with HUB New Mexico based in Albuquerque. She I was born in Phoenix, AZ and raised in New Mexico. great grandparents founded Cliff’s Amusement Park in 1959.

She has seen the challenges they (and other businesses) are facing. Tamara has seen the devastation of locally owned businesses closing and is concerned about our states policies.

In her professional work she focuses on New Mexico-based businesses and works on understanding her clients’ business, dangers, opportunities and strengths.

Tomorrow the House Labor, Veterans’, and Military Affairs committee will consider HB 19, the “Real Estate Transfer Tax Act.” The bill would impose a tax on the transfer of real estate valued at over $500,000, and an even higher rate for property valued over $750,000. For our state’s economy to thrive, we need to attract residents from out of state, but this bill would discourage many people interested in moving to New Mexico.

The meeting starts at 1:30 P.M. on Tuesday, and you can watch the webcast here, or join the Zoom meeting here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to HB 19.

Tomorrow the Senate Tax, Business, and Transportation committee will consider SB 130, which would force 75% of the state’s vehicle fleet to be fully electric by 2030. This change would cost taxpayers not only for the vehicles but also to build out charging station infrastructure.

The meeting starts at 1:30 P.M. on Tuesday. You can watch the webcast here or request a link to give testimony by emailing scorc@nmlegis.gov before 10 A.M. Tuesday morning.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to the SB 130.

KOAT recently did an excellent story detailing problems with the court-ordered agreement with the Department of Justice that the City of Albuquerque has been under for several years now.

The agreement has cost taxpayers $20 million to pay for training, equipment, staffing and a court-appointed monitor and, while it is hard to prove causation, violent crime in the City has increased by 53 percent.

Watch the full story below. Gessing appears at the end of the Story.

On Monday afternoon the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider SB 74, the Health Order Termination and Renewal bill. The bill would force an expiration of emergency health orders after either fourteen or thirty days if they are not renewed by either the legislature or a group of legislative leaders. This bill is one of several that would advance legislative oversight over extended health orders and emergency declarations.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will meet on Monday, February 14th starting at 1:30 P.M. You can watch the webcast here. If you would like to speak in favor of this bill, please email sjc@nmlegis.gov before 5 P.M. on Sunday with your name, email address, the bill number (SB 74), the name of the entity you represent, and indicate that you would like to speak in favor of this legislation.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in favor of SB 74.

In the last month, New Mexico and the United States as a whole have witnessed unprecedented attacks on the traditional energy sector. Nationally, President Biden’s ban — for now, just described as a pause — on new oil and gas leases on federal lands has been well documented. So too has his revoking of the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

While such decisions are undoubtedly popular with radical environmentalists and their well-funded allies, it is hard to see how they — or anyone likely to follow them — will achieve the reductions in CO₂ emissions necessary to make any difference to the climate. Look, for example, at the impact of the Keystone XL pipeline decision. With no available pipeline, Canada and its oil producers will simply load their oil onto trains or trucks, relying instead on modes of transport that are more risky and less energy-efficient. Indeed, doing so will involve higher greenhouse-gas emissions than the pipeline would have, especially considering the pipeline developers’ recent promise to use only renewable energy to operate the project.

Overall, less than 10 percent of American oil and gas comes from federal lands. Cutting production from them won’t have a real impact on producers on private and state lands, nor will it reduce demand for foreign oil. Nevertheless, this new policy could end up inflicting significant economic pain on an already shaky U.S. economy.

Even if a relatively small amount of U.S. oil and gas production comes from federal lands, bans or restrictions there will have a disproportionate effect on a good number of states and their economies (like my own in New Mexico). Half of New Mexico’s oil and gas production — much of it fracked — is on federal land. Long-term curtailment of oil and gas drilling on federal lands would devastate the state’s budget.

Not to be outdone by the Biden administration, the Democrat-dominated legislature here in “deep blue” New Mexico is considering a number of proposals of their own. (Mind you, the state is one of the poorest in the Union and, thanks to fracking, is the country’s third-largest oil producer.) Chief among them is legislation that would require all new construction (homes and schools) in New Mexico to incorporate solar panels and mandate that 75 percent of all state-government vehicles be electric-only. Another bill would require dramatic reductions in “carbon intensity” for vehicles purchased by everyday New Mexicans. The technology to reduce carbon-intensity of New Mexico vehicles is left unsaid because the regulation would oblige fuel producers to work this out for themselves.

Writing for the Albuquerque Journal, two Democratic state legislators explained the proposals:

By requiring fuel providers that refine, blend, make or import fuel used in New Mexico to gradually reduce the carbon intensity of the transportation fuel itself, we can reduce emissions by 4.7 million metric tons in carbon dioxide equivalent by 2040. That’s like taking 44,000 cars off the road every year for 15 years. A clean fuel standard would not apply to retail gas stations or cause cost increases at the pump.

Yet, the heavy-handed, economy-killing efforts in New Mexico and in various state capitals across the country will do little to rein in global CO₂ emissions. In fact, CO₂ emissions are already being curbed in the United States through a combination of market forces and government policies. The real problem is that emissions are exploding elsewhere, most notably in China.

In late 2020, Forbes noted that U.S. CO₂ emissions already comply with the Paris agreement. Goosed by an 11 percent drop in CO₂ emissions in 2020 due to COVID-19–induced travel reductions, the United States has seen emissions drop since the mid 1980s. Nowadays, despite a population that is 40 percent larger than it was in the mid 1980s, U.S. CO₂emissions are approximately the same as they were back then. This is a remarkable feat.

Indeed, the combination of a long-term shift in electricity generation from coal to natural gas (in no small part thanks to fracking), along with the energy efficiency generated both by market competition and regulatory pressure, fuel-mileage mandates, and the Clean Air Act, have made the United States a more CO₂-efficient national economy.

China, on the other hand, is not just rapidly increasing CO₂ emissions, it is massively expanding coal-fired electricity production. According to Voice of America, “China put 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, more than three times the amount built elsewhere around the world and potentially undermining its short-term climate goals.”

Furthermore, according to research released on Wednesday by Global Energy Monitor, China’s coal-fired fleet capacity rose by a net 29.8 GW in 2020 (including decommissions), even as the rest of the world made cuts of 17.2 GW.

China, which still has millions of citizens living in real poverty, certainly has a right to develop its economy. But if the Biden administration is serious about addressing climate change, it ought to use the bully pulpit to cajole China to move toward lower CO₂ intensity. After all, China is already the global “leader,” with CO₂ emissions approximately doubling those of the United States. Those emissions rose even during the pandemic year of 2020.

Even if the Biden administration and states such as New Mexico make a concerted and focused effort to reduce CO₂emissions (an open question to say the least), the United States won’t be able to halt climate change. Any CO₂ reduction we make is only displaced by a doubling from China, who seems more serious about developing its own economy than the Biden administration and many “blue” states like New Mexico are about theirs.

President Joe Biden and New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham telling us to pay more for energy while destroying thousands of energy jobs is a hard pill to swallow even if we were to make serious progress toward achieving our climate goals. But to do immense damage to the U.S. and New Mexico economies while allowing American progress on CO₂ emissions to be undermined by our economic and geopolitical rivals in China is woefully misbegotten.

HB 206, known as the Utility Affordability and Relief Act, will be heard in the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee on Saturday, February 13, starting at 1:30pm. Click here if you’d like to testify.

The bill is designed to address issues relating to COVID 19 with regard to utilities being disconnected thanks in part to COVID 19. There are other provisions in the bill including the authorization of utility rate preferences for low-income New Mexicans.

While well-intended, unfortunately, the legislation would have an overall negative impact on ALL New Mexicans.

• The bill prohibits utility disconnects due to COVID 19 and creates a program for partial forgiveness of debts incurred during the Pandemic. Of course, that pandemic began 11 months ago, and this legislation would not take effect until the Pandemic has been going for a year or more.

In the meantime, the Public Regulation Commission has maintained a moratorium on utility disconnections for all ratepayers who fall into arrears while the governor’s emergency health orders remain in place. The PRC extended that order Feb. 3 for 100 days for public utilities like Public Service Co. of New Mexico, and 45 more days for smaller utilities and rural electric cooperatives.

Who knows what the future holds, but overall conditions relating to the Virus seem to be improving. It seems hard to understand why the Legislature would need to legislate on the issue at this late date.

• This bill would also open utility prices to manipulation in the form of “preferred” rates for certain groups, particularly “low-income” ratepayers. While current programs exist to assist those of modest means with their utility bills, the fact is that this bill would encourage utilities to begin price discrimination based on income levels. It would be unwise to further duplicate efforts to assist low-income payers.

Of course, if the Legislature cared about increasing utility costs, especially for electricity, they should have capped rate increases when they had the opportunity to consider HB 176 this session. Of course, if the Legislature were serious about keeping electricity rates low it would also consider repeal of the Energy Transition Act AND Richardson-era “renewable” mandates and instead returning electricity markets to something more closely resembling market prices.