The Clean Future Act, HB6, is up for a vote tomorrow morning in HGEIC at 8:00AM. Today we reviewed copies of the Committee Substitute offered in response to demanded amendments from the Environmental Justice coalition led by YUCCA, SWOP and Pueblo Action Alliance which we signed on to support. We are grateful for the changes sponsors made, including moving up the timeline for rulemaking and measures to ensure consultation with impacted frontline communities and tribal entities, but we continue to oppose the commodification of our air, land and water in the form of carbon offsets, carbon credits and trading schemes.
As delineated clearly in this excellent article, three decades of market schemes have simply failed to produce any meaningful results. The authors write:
While the reasons for 30 years of failure to bend the global emissions curve are multifaceted, a common and strong thread is woven through them all. In various guises and to differing degrees, the centralization of power and the privileges that accompany it have coalesced around a particular worldview. Through recent decades, the central tenets of this worldview have evolved into a wider global Zeitgeist whereby development and progress are reduced to economic growth and defined by increasingly narrow financial metrics and indices.
We cannot double down on these failed policies. This is about efficacy. This is about the failure to show results. This is about recognizing how offsets and carbon credits are used to justify continued and egregious pollution of the poorest marginalized and politically powerless communities, as economists desperately seek to craft economic solutions that will prop up the myth of sustainable unlimited GDP growth.
We are asking you to oppose HB 6 because:
1. The bill leaves all specifics to a later date, including no clear standards or systems for measurement or verification, and no specific framework for decision making, leaving the rulemaking process vulnerable to abuse and corruption.
2. This administration has failed to deliver emissions reductions and corporate accountability over existing pollution sources, and we don't trust the administration's ability to hold industry accountable in additional measurement and enforcement roles.
3. The bill fails to account for downstream emissions, or even to include such emissions in reporting requirements. Without such accounting, any reporting requirements provide a dishonest and arbitrary assessment of New Mexico climate emissions, leaving out the impact of oil and gas drilled and exported from New Mexico to pollute the rest of the earth. It is called "global" warming because we are all in this together.
4. The bill attempts to commodify our sacred air, land and water. That approach has failed to produce the carbon reductions we needed. Why would we double down on a failed approach? Instead we should be promoting real reductions and mitigation measures that challenge the existing paradigm and value the earth that we all depend on for sustenance.
HYDROGEN ZOMBIE #3 TO BE HEARD AT 1:30PM
Today we won on SB194, preventing a cynical redefinition of hydrogen as a "clean" renewable energy source. Today we also learned that Hydrogen Hub Development Act sponsors refuse to take no for an answer. They have introduced yet another iteration of the Hydrogen Hub Development Act using dummy bill HB 228, euphemistically titled "Public Peace, Health, Safety & Welfare." It will be heard first in the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee at 1:30PM.
Do they think we won't notice or we'll get tired? If so, they will find themselves surprised by how much we love the earth, our fellow New Mexicans and our children.