Democracy for New Mexico

City of Santa Fe: Spring Celebration and More

From the City of Santa Fe:
Spring is a great time to be outdoors and enjoy Santa Fe’s environment! Here are four fun and worthwhile community events to celebrate our city and your spring fever.

Volunteers Needed to Plant Native Trees Along the Santa Fe River -- Saturday, April 7th and Saturday, April 14th, 9 AM to 3 PM: After many years of hard work, the San Ysidro River Park in Agua Fria is almost finished. Come join us for willow planting on April 7 and 14 from 9 AM to 3 PM. We will be planting over 2,000 trees and need all the help we can get. No special skills required, just enthusiasm and a willingness to get dirty. Please bring gloves, water and a snack/lunch. We will be meeting in the parking lot at the San Ysidro Park (located near San Ysidro crossing). There is no need to sign-up in advance, but if you would like more information, please call Pamela Dupzyk, Santa Fe Watershed Association Program Director, at 820-1696.

A Day of Fun and Action: Trade-In Your Incandescent Light Bulbs for Energy Conserving Compact Fluorescent Bulbs -- Saturday, April 14th, 1 PM to 3 PM at Franklin Miles Park: Join the Sierra Club, the City of Santa Fe, PNM, and the Interfaith Alliance for A Day of Fun & Action – learn how YOU can solve global warming, and how you and your elected representatives can “Step It Up”.  See exhibits by green businesses, learn how to cut your global warming emissions, bring a picnic lunch and listen to Round Mountain and speakers.

Light Bulb Trade In: bring us your incandescent light bulbs – for each bulb you bring us, we will give you a 100 watt compact fluorescent bulb – a $5 value! For every five bulbs you bring, the City will give you a pass to the Genoveva Chavez Community Center.

Costume Contest: for kids and adults. Dress as the plant or animal you would most miss if global warming is not stopped.

Molly Ivins Memorial Pots and Pans Band: bring your pots, pans, and other kitchen implements and get ready to bang away in honor of the late Molly Ivins.

For more information, contact Carol Oldham, Sierra Club New Mexico Regional Representative at (505) 243-7767.

Volunteers Needed for the Great American Clean Up -- April 21st: This is a great opportunity to get your neighbors together to Spring Clean your neighborhood or come and help clean up Santa Fe.  Registration will take place on Saturday, April 21st between 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM at the City of Santa Fe Parks Building, 1142 Siler Road. The Clean Up will run until noon; trash bags will be provided. A picnic for volunteers will follow, 12 noon – 2 PM, at the Buckman Road Recycling and Transfer Station, 1686 Paseo de Vista. For more information, contact Gilda Montaño, City of Santa Fe Keep Santa Fe Beautiful Coordinator, at 955-2215.

Santa Fe River Festival -- June 2nd, 11 AM to 3 PM at Frenchy’s Field Park: The first annual Santa Fe River Festival will be held on June 2nd from 11 AM to 3 PM at Frenchy’s Field Park and we need your help. The Festival will be a celebration of the river with art activities, naturalist walks, science investigations, music, food, and educational booths, preceded by an all-river clean-up. If you would like to participate in this community event, please contact Pamela at pamelad@santafewatershed.org. Committees are forming for art, food/music, and volunteer coordination. The River Festival 2007 is sponsored by The Santa Fe Watershed Association, the City of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County.

Participate in Otero Mesa Public Forum and Speak Out

From the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance:

Otero Mesa Public Forum
Working to Protect New Mexico's Wildest Grassland
Thursday, April 19th, 6:30 PM-8:00 PM
Elks Lodge (2290 Hamilton Rd) in Alamogordo-FREE

Please be part of a historic day and help send a message to Washington that New Mexico's quality of life means much more than a few days worth of oil and gas! Special guest speakers include: Rick Simpson, former Lincoln County Commissioner and Outfitter; activist rancher Tweeti Walser Blancett; high school teacher and wildlife expert Steve West; energy science, policy and economics expert Bill Brown; water expert with Sandia National Labs, plus local elected officials.

Come learn what you can do to protect Otero Mesa, its wildlife, water and wilderness. RSVP or for more information, contact Nathan Newcomer at 505-843-8696 or nathan@nmwild.org

Speak Out for Otero Mesa A Voice for Wilderness!
Take a few minutes to call in and voice your concerns for our wildest public lands. Our objective is to get as many voices as possible speaking out on protecting wilderness.

Please be concise and short in your comments. It is important that we get as many voices as possible speaking out on wilderness. Our objective is to create a CD of voices and present them to our congressional delegation, letting them hear, directly from you, how important wilderness is.Our Current Voices for Wilderness Campaign is focusing on Otero Mesa.

Please call (505) 333-0420 and leave a message today for our congressional delegation, urging them to support a moratorium on drilling in this wild Chihuahuan Desert grassland. To learn more about Otero Mesa please visit: www.oteromesa.org

Nathan Newcomer
Otero Mesa Campaign Organizer

Check Out Peace & Sustainability Fair at UNM

Schedule

Indoors along with the vendors and booths:

11:00 A.M.       Welcoming Statement followed by Keynote Speaker Demetria Martinez

12:30 - 1:30     Global Warming Panel Discussion

1:30 - 2:00       Hiroshima; Survivors of the Atom Bomb - Holly Siebert Kawakami

                        Marda Permaculture Farm in the West Bank of Palestine - Tami Brunk

2:00 - 3:30       Militarization Panel Discussion

3:30 - 4:00       African Drummers

4:00 - 5:30       New Mexico Food Shed Project Panel Discussion

5:30 - 6:00       Slam Poetry

6:00 - 7:00       Keynote Speaker Keith McHenry (cofounder of Food not Bombs)

Outdoors:

• Sustainability Activities throughout the day
• Veggie/Ethanol Car display and demonstrations
• Bio-Processor demonstrations
• Solar equipment demonstrations
• Live Music

Sponsors

Exhibitors

To become a sponsor or exhibitor

For more information contact: Susi Knoblauch, Office of International Programs and Studies, 2111 Mesa Vista Hall, UNM, contact: 505-277-4032 or chknob@unm.edu

CVNM Reports on NM Legislature Environmental Successes

From Conservation Voters New Mexico:
At this year's New Mexico Legislature, we passed a breathtaking number of pro-environment bills (over 20 great bills!!) and we defeated the worst anti-environment bills, such as the Desert Rock coal subsidy and the Administrative Accountability Act!  Indeed, this legislature passed more pro-environment bills than we've seen in years.  We provide for you below a link to our final report on the status of all the pro- and anti-conservation bills that CVNM lobbied and tracked during the session.

Of course, we owe this year's environmental achievements to the leadership and tenacity of our pro-conservation legislative , to several new pro-conservation , to the broader NM environmental community, and to the numerous phone calls our CVNM members made to their legislators on specific bills. Thanks also to Speaker of the House Ben Lujan for creating the best House Energy & Natural Resources Committee in recent memory!

Further, our pro-conservation Governor has fulfilled, to date, our veto requests—THANK YOU GOVERNOR RICHARDSON —and we look forward to two additional vetoes in the coming weeks. 

With the arrival of spring, we turn our attention to scoring the votes of legislators for our annual so that you can know how each of your legislators voted on these critical issues.  Thanks for being a conservation voter and let us know if you have any questions or comments about the progress report provided here.

Sincerely,
Sandy Buffett, CVNM Executive Director

Free Screening of An Inconvenient Truth in Tijeras

An Inconvenient Truth: Free Showing
Friday, March 30 at 6:30 PM
Los Vecinos Community Center
478 1/2 Route 66, Tijeras, NM
Everyone welcome. Hosted by the East Mountain Spiritual Progressives. For further info call 286-1228.

Don't Miss Dave Foreman at UNM

Free lecture & slide show
Thursday, March 29, 7:00 PM
SUB Ballroom C, UNM Campus, Albuquerque, NM

Join Dave Foreman for a raucous and inspiring evening about the future of conservation in North America. Drawing upon a lifetime of experience in the environmental movement, Foreman offers bold, hopeful, and viable proposals for averting the current sixth mass extinction and creating a biologically-sustainable continent within the 21st Century. Foreman is the author of several books, including The Big Outside and Rewilding North America, and will be signing copies after the lecture. Contact UNM Wilderness Alliance at unmwild@unm.edu or 277-1316 for more information. 

Al Gore Urges Congress on Act on Global Warming

Here's a clip of Al Gore's opening statement this morning before a joint meeting of U.S. House energy subcommittees. He's presenting copies of more than 500,000 e-post cards gathered over recent days from citizens urging Congress to act quickly to address the serious climate problems we face. You can still be a part of this effort by signing up at AlGore.com.

Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who used to chair the energy committee now led by Democratic Rep. John Dingell, wasted a fair amount of time complaining about parliamentary process and alleged rules infractions. He also saw fit to keep injecting bogus proof that global warming caused by humans is nonexistent. Big oil money talks. The facts he and others have to face are, I had to say it, inconvenient truths.

Al and Tipper Gore present the postcards from citizens urging Congress to act on global warming (AP photo)

I thought Gore came off as intelligent, very well informed, polite, reasonable, passionate, moving, nonpartisan, friendly and truthful. However, I found the hearing difficult to watch because my mind kept wandering to what ifs, as in, "what if our Supreme Court had allowed all the votes to be counted in Florida?" Imagine an America and a planet that hadn't just endured six years of ignorant, secretive, selfish, incompetent, dishonest, unconstitutional rule by an administration led by someone who's most important job previously was running a baseball team and who had never ventured beyond America's borders except, perhaps, to coke it up in Tijuana.

Here's the New York Times article reporting on Gore's testimony this morning. Excerpt:

Democrats and Republicans, he said, should emulate their British counterparts and compete to see how best to curb emissions of smokestack and tailpipe “greenhouse” gases that scientists have now firmly linked to a global warming trend.

Mr. Gore also proposed a 10-point legislative program, calling for everything from a tax on carbon emissions to a ban on incandescent light bulbs and a new national mortgage program to promote the use of energy-saving technologies in homes.

Gore will also testify before Senate energy committees this afternoon. As reported in an L.A. Times article, here's the kind of short-sighted attitude we can expect from way too many Republicans:

Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) is unimpressed by the new Gore mission. "Those who believe all his garbage are going to be excited to death," he said, "and the rest of us are going to ignore it."

... Gore could encounter flak when he appears before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, whose top Republican, Oklahoma Sen. James M. Inhofe, has dismissed man-made climate change as a "hoax" and, like Bush, has said he won't see Gore's movie.

Help Al Gore Convince Congress to Act on Global Warming

Al Gore is trying to gather at least 500,000 signatures in support of a message he'll take to Congress this coming Wednesday to urge them to take swift and effective action to combat global warming. If you haven't yet signed up, click here. Pass it on, ASAP.

Urgent Action Needed for Otero Mesa

From the NM Wilderness Alliance: Please make a few phone calls. Otero Mesa is critically important for its unique desert grasslands and wildlife, but it also contains the largest untapped source of water in New Mexico--a potentially extremely important resource for southern NM communities.  The fate of Otero Mesa hinges on a proposed hydrologic study of this aquifer. We need to better understand it, and the risk posed by oil and gas development. There are two options to get this critical study funded:

• Governor Richardson has already secured $1 million for the study. We can ask him to completely fund the required $2.2 million.
• The legislature is currently hammering out the final details of the budget. We can ask them to fund the remaining $1.2 million.

Because we can't be certain which will be most effective, we are asking folks to do both:

• Please contact the Governor's office (476-2200), and ask him to fully fund the $2.2 million for the Salt Basin hydrologic study through his capital outlay.
• Please contact the following committee chairs responsible for the final budget and ask them to include $1.2 million in House Bill 2 to complete funding for the Salt Basin hydrologic study. Although these may not be your legislators, they are the ones with the power to add an item to the budget.
  • Kiki Savedra: 986-4316 
  • Lucky Varela: 986-4318 
  • Tim Jennings: 986-4362 
  • John Arthur Smith: 986-4363

Thanks Everyone!
Nathan Newcomer, Otero Mesa Campaign Organizer

Gov. Richardson Signs Renewable Energy Bills

Audio: Listen to Albuquerque public radio KUNM's Jim Williams reporting on some of the many environmental and greenhouse gas reduction bills being considered at this year's legislature, as well as on Gov. Bill Richardson's signing of two innovative renewable energy bills this past Monday. And here's how a press release for the Governor's office describes the clean energy legislation:

SANTA FE - Governor Bill Richardson today signed two major cornerstones of his clean energy agenda. Senate Bill 418 will dramatically increase New Mexico’s Renewable Portfolio Standard and our use of clean electricity. House Bill 188 creates a Renewable Energy Transmission Authority to promote clean energy jobs and help New Mexico both develop our clean energy resources and market them to other states.

“I am proud today to sign a bill that will quadruple New Mexico’s use of clean electricity by 2020,” said Governor Bill Richardson. “Promoting renewable electricity keeps our air clean and it will help New Mexico meet my aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals. It will also help continue to create new jobs, like those at Advent Solar in Albuquerque, and aid ranchers who want to diversify into the lucrative wind energy market.”

In 2004 Governor Richardson signed New Mexico’s first Renewable Portfolio Standard into law. This mandated that 5% of New Mexico’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2006, increasing to 10% by 2011. Senator Michael Sanchez’s Senate Bill 418 requires that at least 15 percent of an electric utility's power supply come from renewable sources by 2015 and 20 percent by 2020.

House Bill 188 – sponsored by Representative Jose Campos -- establishes a Renewable Energy Transmission Authority that will help New Mexico export solar, wind and other renewable energy and further build our high-wage, and high-tech economy.

“The Transmission Authority and the Renewable Portfolio Standard work in combination to dramatically position New Mexico to develop our vast renewable energy resources,” said Joanna Prukop, Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources. “We've just positioned our state to become extremely competitive in all aspects of clean energy development and the benefits that come with it.”

Under Governor Richardson’s leadership, New Mexico has become the nation’s Clean Energy State. In the past few weeks alone Governor Richardson has signed a major, five state climate change agreement, announced a new Tesla electric car plant for Albuquerque and a biodiesel plant in Clovis, NM.

“I am proud that both these bills passed with bipartisan support,” said Governor Richardson. “That is because New Mexico is hungry for clean energy and the good jobs that come with this new industry.”

Editor's Note: Desert Rock Power Plant
Now what we need is for the Governor to speak out strongly against the construction of the massive new coal-fired Desert Rock Power Plant by Sithe Global near Farmington, on Navajo Nation land. If allowed, the plant will pump out 10.5 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide each year, effectively wiping out most of the gains to be made by other anti-greenhouse gas efforts in New Mexico, as well as contribute to an existing mercury hotspot.

I know the Navajo Nation has significant sovereign power over the use of their land, but it might help if the Governor made an issue out of the damaging effects the pollution from the plant would have not only on New Mexico, but on communities all across the nation. With a required Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) still pending on the plant, there's a chance the plant can still be stopped or at least required to significantly upgrade its pollution technologies. Public hearings on the plant's draft EIS will be held this Spring.

For more information, visit the website of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, the desert-rock-blog, the New Mexico Coaltion for Clean Affordable Energy and the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club.