Groundbreaking study quantifies the loss of water resources directly attributable to fossil fuel companies in the western United States

A groundbreaking new study has identified specifically who is responsible for the loss of over a third of the typical annual snowpack in the Western United States between 2014 and 2024, and decreased streamflows of about 13 percent. The authors found that about half of those losses - 40 to 64% - are attributable to emissions from the “carbon majors,” 122 fossil fuel companies and cement producers responsible for the majority of carbon emissions.

Who are those "carbon majors" directly profiting off the extraction of oil and gas from New Mexico while destroying our water resources? Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Occidental, Devon Energy, EOG Resources, and Diamondback Energy. They are directly responsible for our water crisis.

Since the 1950's fossil fuel companies knew their product would wreak havoc on the earth's atmosphere, but instead of pivoting to alternative energy sources, they conspired to mislead political leaders and the public so as to prolong their destructive industry as long as possible. An article about the implications of this new study describes the ultimate goal of this coordinated fossil fuel plan:

"The Union of Concerned Scientists documented in 85 internal industry memos — spanning ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP, Shell, and Peabody Energy — what UCS described as a coordinated effort to manufacture public uncertainty about climate science, even as company scientists were privately modeling accurate warming trajectories. An internal industry memo cited by UCS stated its goal plainly: "Victory will be achieved when the average person is uncertain about climate science." (emphasis added)

Meanwhile, the Santa Fe New Mexican gives front page coverage to new state revenues resulting from the war profiteering by the oil and gas industry, a profit earned off the backs of people paying higher prices for their dirty product. Not mentioned - the direct costs New Mexico is incurring as a result of droughts, fires, floods and the homeowners insurance crisis, or the extreme indirect costs we are all paying:

• These new state revenues don't offset the externalized costs paid by everyday people. As ProgressNow detailed in a recent series about who really pays the costs of extraction, hidden costs paid by every family include higher taxes to pay for repairs to deteriorating roads, higher gas prices, higher grocery bills, higher home heating and cooling costs and higher healthcare costs. Individual New Mexicans spend an average of $286 on groceries per week (6th highest in the nation) and 46% of households cannot afford basic necessities. The permanent fund grows to benefit some future generation, but that is not benefiting real people paying bills today. As ProgressNow concludes: "the oil boom benefits the state budget while households pay the price."

• New Mexicans are dying. July was the hottest month in New Mexican history. It's not only uncomfortable. It's dangerous. Since April 1st more than 904 New Mexicans have been rushed to emergency rooms with heat-related illness and at least six people have died. That's more than all of last summer combined. NMED has responded by again delaying heat protection rules for workers - denying them the right to water, rest and shade.

• Our quality of life is rapidly deteriorating. It is often too hot to go out and enjoy the beauty of our state, and even if we wanted to brave the heat, the forests are burning, causing air quality crises that force people to stay indoors and starving bears to scavenge for food in our neighborhoods. Our wells are drying up, our crops are withering, and our children suffer extreme anxiety as they face an uncertain future.

As Bill McKibben's most recent piece detailed, our ecosystem is reaching its limits. Yields for staples like wheat and rice are already collapsing, and food shortages loom:

"In Europe, knocked to its knees by an endless stream of heat waves this summer, we have reports of vegetable harvests collapsing by double digits—sixty percent of France’s broccoli crop, for instance, is gone. Britain could face food shortages within months, one excited newspaper report warns; in Ireland, they’re calling for an emergency food stockpile as harvests run low. The UK government has refused to release an unredacted copy of a report from the country’s intelligence agencies about ecosystem collapse amidst rising temperatures, but we do know that it predicts the very real possibility of widespread food shortages by 2030, resulting in “price rises, migration, political destabilisation and possible war… fueled by the human-induced climate crisis.”

And in Nepal potentially thousands of people have just been washed away after a warming glacier and the permafrost beneath it collapsed into a terrifying wall of crushed rock and floodwaters, destroying communities, homes and lives far downstream. There is no amount of oil and gas revenue worth the price we are all paying.

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WE FIGHT WHERE WE CAN AND WHEN WE CAN

On Monday, after the NM Supreme Court issued a stay on the Project Jupiter air permit proceedings, Project Jupiter developers brought in new lawyers from Kirkland and Ellis to ask the Supreme Court to allow the filings of testimony and responses to proceed while the court decides on the due process questions raised in our Motion for Stay and Writ of Mandamus. They argued that the 90 day deadline for issuing a permit is a hard and fast rule, pointing to one section in statute NMSA 1978, § 74-2-7(B)(2), but deliberately leaving out the very next clause in the statute:

“if the department or local agency fails to take final action on a construction permit application within the deadlines specified in Paragraph (2) of this subsection, the department or local agency shall notify the applicant in writing that an extension of time is required to process the application and specify in detail the grounds for the extension.” NMSA 1978, § 74-2-7(B)(3).

They also argued that proceeding with the filing schedule would have no impact on New Energy Economy and other parties, deliberately ignoring the substance of our due process arguments - that being forced to develop and submit testimony without sufficient time, the right to discovery or the full administrative record made it impossible to ascertain the truth about Project Jupiter's potential air quality impacts.

We filed our response on Wednesday, pointing out both their deliberate omission of the legal clause that renders their permit deadline argument absurd, as well as the fact that under the law, expedience does not supersede constitutional rights to due process.

In the face of the overwhelming scale of the climate crisis and the obscene power of AI oligarchs, our efforts can seem pointless, but we again turn to Bill McKibben to help put into words why we are fighting "where we can and when we can":

Bill Kristol, the neocon turned never-Trumper, complained the other day that there’ssomething bleak about seeing the policy debate over how we ought to shape and regulate this massive, unbelievable, titanic technology [AI] collapse down into what’s essentially a NIMBY squabble over where to park the chips that power it.But that’s wrong, I think. People are rallying where they can, on ground that means something to them. We can’t compete with these guys when it comes to buying elections—Musk alone is pouring $100 million into Senate campaigns in the next few weeks. We can, however, organize in the places we care about, and in the process strike some kind of blow for the things we care about, even if we perceive the threats only dimly. 

We are fighting where we can, on land that means something to us. To protect what is beautiful, what is sacred, what is essential to humanity - clean water, clean air, and the awesome beauty of a New Mexico sky. This is our home. This is our Mother. We will not back down.