It is possible to feel many things at once - burning rage and a deep sorrow borne of love. Action is sanity.

In Tehran today people are breathing a toxic soup of oil and dangerous particulates. The sky is black, death rains down and there is no water. In the words of Mehnaz, quoted in The Guardian: 

“The Rey depot, you won’t believe, was still on fire and it’s insane because in the night it looked like day and in the day, it was so dark, it looked like a new moon night. So, so dark, just like our futures.”

Aramco is warning of “catastrophic consequences” for the world’s economy if the war on Iran continues to block shipping in the strait of Hormuz. And on Sunday it was reported that Trump is considering boots on the ground to seize Kharg Island, through which 90 per cent of Iran's exports flow. This war was always about the oil.

Today the NY Times reported that Alberta indigenous communities downstream of the tar sands oil fields are dying of cancer at catastrophic rates as waste leaches from open pits into their groundwater, but the government has ignored their plight and is about to greenlight dumping of the overwhelming volumes of extraction waste directly into rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean.And here in NM the WATR Alliance has once again petitioned the WQCC to dump their fracking waste into our water. More on that below.

These are the fruits of our subservience to fossil-fuel hegemony. From Venezuela, to Iran, to the Arctic circle, to our own land and rivers, the oil and gas industry seeks to hold humanity hostage to its violent and deadly industry, regardless of the cost to humanity, ecosystems and every future generation. They are doubling down and flexing their power because now the alternatives exist.

We sit here today, burning with rage, feeling deeply fear and grief borne of love for all those suffering at the hands of oil and gas profiteers, and battling the temptation to look away in an effort to save our own sanity. Each of these represents a valid and logical reaction to the violence we are witnessing. We could shut down, but instead we choose to draw on that rage, to double down on love for every last living thing that can be saved, and to focus on battles here in New Mexico, where we have a fighting chance to win. That is where sanity lies.

THE EVIDENCE AGAINST BLACKSTONE CONTINUES TO MOUNT - ILLEGAL ACTIVITY IN NM, AN AFFORDABILITY UPROAR IN INDIANA, AND THE THREAT OF INCREASING RELIANCE ON GAS  TO POWER DATA CENTERS

Two days after we announced Karen Hao's upcoming Saturday, March 14th events to talk about how Blackstone's AI ambitions could impact New Mexico, our venue in Albuquerque was sold out and we had to upgrade to the Historic Lobo Theater. That is because New Mexicans are so worried about Blackstone's record of corporate greed and pattern of flouting regulations. This includes the Attorney General's office, which filed a brief last week asserting that Blackstone's failure to get PRC approval for a $400M merger related stock purchase was "apparently in violation" of state law.

In Indiana, where Blackstone bought a significant share of stock in the local utility called NIPSCO and then invested $1.5 billion in a new subsidiary utility called GenCo specifically to power data centers, Indiana utility regulators are launching an investigation into rates and billing practices because of what local activists call an "affordability uproar."

On March 2nd a report titled Blackstone’s utility playbook: NIPSCO and the future of TXNM the Private Equity Stakeholder Project reports that NIPSCO’s electricity rates are the highest in the state, and customers are seeing rates go up again, with some experiencing double or triple increases in the last year. One customer told the local news: “I’ve never seen anything like this in my whole life. I’ve lived in my house for 35 years and it’s normally like $300 in the winter. It’s $800 now”.

The report also notes that NIPSCO, via Blackstone funded subsidiary GenCo, is planning to build a 2,300 MW gas-fired power plant to service new data centers with limited or no public input. The proposed power plant would potentially emit 7 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, making it the third most polluting industrial facility in the state. This is what New Mexico has in store if we allow Blackstone to buy our largest electric utility.

ITS GROUNDHOG DAY!"WATR ALLIANCE" FRONT GROUP FOR OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY FILES ANOTHER FRACKING WASTE DUMPING PETITION

On March 3rd WATR Alliance, the thinly veiled front group for oil and gas majors and industrial waste treatment companies that is lobbying for produced water reuse, filed another petition at the WQCC after scandal derailed the first effort to override the Water Quality Control Commission's 2025 rule prohibiting discharge. 

This time, again, the Alliance insists new science proves that their scheme to dump vast amounts of treated fracking waste onto roads, farmland and into our rivers is safe, but they once again neglect to present that scientific record to the WQCC and stakeholders in advance to prove that a new regulatory proceeding is warranted. Should we trust them?

The new petition is also deficient on its face, lacking any Water Quality Standards for the 400 analytes proponents have identified, and once again failing to provide a satisfactory resolution to the fact that more than 1400 chemical compounds have been detected in produced water, most of which have not even been positively identified or evaluated for health impacts on humans.

The petitioners state that they will amend their petition, which is an admission that their petition is not ready for prime time. This means that they should get their act together first, before wasting all of our time. Even without being ready, they ask that the WQCC rush to schedule a hearing on their unfinished petition in August or September. We expect the WQCC to make a decision about that request at the April meeting. Heads up.