I need you to walk with me - so we can remember why we are doing this, together.
Each morning I walk through the remaining wild lands near my home, down by the bosque to the Rio Grande where the sacred Black Mesa peeks from behind the bend in the river. The river I have seen a thousand times, in every season. Mint green in new leaf, lushly forested, ablaze in yellow when the cottonwoods turn, and now brown and red, tipped in frost and awaiting the hushed stillness of another snowy morning, when all things sparkle and the world feels new.
Along my walk I meet my neighbors - packs of coyotes, racing rabbits, hawks, eagles, owls, corvids, ducks, geese, and sometimes evidence of raccoons and bears who have passed by in the night. Yesterday four Sandhill cranes stood in the field and watched me pass.
Each time I walk I feel blessed. I understand that each life is precious. I marvel at the unfolding leaves, the seed heads nodding in the wind, the plants and trees upon which all this wondrous life depends. I feel in my bones the knowledge that we are connected to each other, connected to every species, to the soil, to our Mother Earth.
Each one of us has this connection. You’ve felt it I’m sure. In the places and faces you love. In the wonder you know. In the grief and sorrow you feel when the connection is severed. In your heart’s yearning to return to belonging.
Though our struggle for justice faces great odds, this sacred connected web of life is our greatest and most powerful ally. She will not be ignored. She has abruptly changed the conversation already - past the head-smashing futility of arguing whether climate change exists, past the absurd denial that fossil fuels are the culprit - to the urgency of now.
And we are with her in this next fight against delay tactics and distractions - the false climate solutions and capitalist schemes that are being thrown out like shiny objects to preserve the profit and power of a small few.
The root of climate chaos is disconnection. Disconnection from each other. Disconnection from the wonder and beauty of life in all its forms and colors. Disconnection from the Earth and the certain knowledge that we are dependent on a complex ecosystem of air, water, soil and biodiversity for LIFE.
Survival demands we remember our humility and our wisdom: the knowledge that we are all dependent on each other, that we are vulnerable alone but mighty together, that our survival and liberation is inextricably linked with that of every other living being.
That is why today we are grateful for our connection with you. You are an integral part of our successes, and you will be an integral part of our fights in the year to come. Together, connected with each other and with our most powerful ally, Mother Earth, we grow STRONGER, we grow LOUDER, and we grow MORE EFFECTIVE, so that we can save all life that can be saved. Every tenth of a degree matters.
Thanks to all of your contributions - we not only met our fundraising goals but surpassed them!!! We raised an incredible $88,734.
We are ringing in the new year with your incredible support and feeling proud of what we’ve accomplished together and what we’re taking on next.In 2023 we:
saved ratepayers $115M in rate credits after the SJGS coal plant closed for good in 2022
won an imprudent finding against PNM's investment in the Four Corners coal plant (final remedy still to be decided.)
won the appeal against the sale of PNM's Four Corners shares in the NM Supreme Court, saving ratepayers a potential $300M and preventing PNM's sale of coal to a third party, which would have prolonged the burning of coal
argued the decoupling case and the Avangrid merger rejection case on appeal in the NM Supreme Court (still awaiting opinions), and intervened to expose the ex parte communications between the PRC and PNM/Avangrid/Iberdrola.
Intervened and organized opposition to the proposed LNG plant in Rio Rancho
AND
Completed our largest ever solarization project at Major Market on Zuni Pueblo
Finally saw the beginning of solarization at the Santa Fe airport, a requirement we fought and won years ago.
Whats ahead in 2024? We can’t know exactly what is headed our way, but we know that just in the first few months:
We are expecting big decisions in the PNM rate case at the PRC, and in the decoupling case and the Avangrid merger case at the Supreme Court.
We will continue our fight against the proposed Liquefied Natural Gas plant in Rio Rancho at the hearing starting January 8th.
We will be advocating at the legislature to pass the Local Solar Access Fund and to oppose the barrage of oil and gas friendly “climate” bills we are expecting - including the Governor’s insane proposition to spend $500M of taxpayer money to buy toxic radioactive waste water from the O&G industry.
We will be defending Community Solar at the PRC and in the NM Supreme Court
We will be raising funds to solarize Reunity Resources and exploring federal funding opportunities to expand our Sol for All initiative dramatically.
And as always, we will be reading the fine print and challenging the corporate influence that stands in the way of change.