New Mexico Climate Change Task Force Seeks Public Input

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The New Mexico Climate Change Task Force encourages the public to participate in a new survey as the state seeks input to guide our ongoing climate work. Public input is a critical component of our climate strategy as we look to meet our emissions reduction goals, as well as boost the state’s resilience to the effects of climate change.

The work of the Task Force, which is co-chaired by the cabinet secretaries of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) and Environment Department (NMED), continued throughout the pandemic and subgroups were created to explore how to move our current strategies forward and develop new ones.

Accomplishments to date include passage of the Energy Transition Act, new solar market development tax credits for homeowners and businesses, adoption of modern statewide building codes, completion of the Renewable Energy Transmission Authority (RETA) study on transmission corridors for renewable energy, and a statewide natural gas waste reduction rule. More accomplishments and strategies underway are detailed in the Task Force’s annual strategy document.

“The Task Force invites all New Mexicans to take part in the survey and identify what matters most to communities when it comes to climate action,” said EMNRD Cabinet Secretary Sarah Cottrell Propst. “Our work will be most impactful if all New Mexicans are represented in our climate plans.”

Please participate in this survey, which is available in English and Spanish and will be open through July 15, 2021.

UCC Church in Albuquerque to Host Environmental Forums in June

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By Ruth Striegel

The Green Justice team at First Congregational UCC in Albuquerque is hosting a special series of online environmental forums during June, and all are welcome to attend over Zoom. There will be forums every Monday evening, 7:00 to 8:00 PM.

On June 7, we’ll be watching an abbreviated version of the documentary, “Kiss the Ground,” and learning about the history of industrial agriculture, the problems created by it, and the movement to embrace regenerative agriculture, healing the soil and sequestering carbon.

On June 14, 21, and 28, we will watch and discuss Climate Solutions 101 from Project Drawdown, an educational program focused on solutions to the climate crisis.

Climate Solutions 101 is the world’s first major educational effort focused solely on solutions. Rather than rehashing well-known climate challenges, Project Drawdown centers game-changing climate action based on its own rigorous scientific research and analysis.

Green Justice is also working with the FCUCC Racial Justice committee to host a forum on Sunday, June 27 at 3:00 PM, where we will learn about how Environmental Racism has impacted New Mexico from Dr. Myrriah Gomez of the UNM Honors College. Myrriah’s current book project, Nuclear Nuevo México: Identity, Ethnicity, and Resistance in Atomic Third Spaces, examines the effects of the nuclear industrial complex on Nuevomexicanos.

All are welcome to attend the forums. Please contact Ruth Striegel at ruth.striegel@gmail.com for a Zoom link.

 

 

NM-IPL Supports Efforts Against Line 3 Replacement Pipeline

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June 5, 2021

Blessings in Solidarity Water Protectors for our Earth:

New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light, hundreds of faith communities, and thousands of people of faith and conscience, in the Land of Enchantment stand in solidarity with you to stop the building of the Line 3 replacement pipeline.  We send prayers and continue to pray with you these days and into the future. However, our prayers also motivate us to sacred action with you and in our own state, which is one of the largest producers of oil and gas in the Permian Basin in South East New Mexico and in the San Juan Basin in the Northwest of our state.

We have been working alongside frontline communities, including many of our Native American brothers and sisters for many years to address extractivism, legacy clean up, water, and related economic transition and health concerns in our state, which suffers with many sacrifice zones.

All of our diverse spiritual traditions hold water as sacred and as life. The pipeline is destroying so much, which cannot be recovered.  We stand at a moral juncture facing a different future with oil and gas extraction. For too long pollution has compromised the lifeways of us all and especially our Native American brothers and sisters in Minnesota and beyond.

The days of tars sands are over, we must stand with you to protect the treaties, to protect sister water, and to protect the climate in order to sustain life to all on this is earth and nation.  As written to President Biden on May 26, this is a battle for the Soul of Our Nation. We rise with you for the treaties, for climate and for water.

We rise together for one another and all creation, to stand for justice and dignity for our sacred creation and humanity—against a backdrop of long years and many lifetimes of colonial terror, injustice, and broken trust. We join ourselves with all who are here to stop the pipeline, knowing that in standing united we are powerful enough to change the tide of greed, waste, and profit, which can no longer govern the hearts of those who govern us. We believe that the spiritual foundations of our paths empower us for this hard work.

NM IPL believes that we have an ethical, moral and spiritual responsibility to address this injustice from spiritual roots to make alive spiritual activism. President Biden is a devote Catholic and a spiritual man and we call upon him from his spiritual foundations and the Catholic Social teachings to not ignore the cry to stop the pipeline.

Thank you for inviting us to join in this gathering of resistance to stand for life and for all you have done to protect all that is sacred for all generations of life here now and to come.

With peace, good and prayers of solidarity,

With peace, good and prayers of solidarity,

Sr. Joan Brown,osf, Executive Director, NM IPL

Emily Syal, staff team

Carlos Navarro, staff team

Terry Sloan, Board member, Catholic, Navajo/Hopi

Stephen Picha, Board member, Presbyterian, Catholic

Ann McCartney, Board member, Spiritual

Ruth Striegel, Board member, United Church of Christ

Judy Smith, Board member, Jewish

Tom Stark, Board member, Unitarian Universalist

Necip Orhan, Board member, Muslim

Arcelia Isais-Gastelum, Board member, Catholic Young Adult

Charlotte Smith, Board member, Bahai

Larry Rasmussen, Author, Advisor

Rev. Anita Amstutz, Mennonite, Advisor

Sr. Rose Marie Cecchinni, mm, Advisor, Office of Life Justice Peace and Creation Stewardship, Gallup Catholic Diocese