Letters to the Editor (Feb. 29, 2024)

Clean energy leader 

Editor: 

Since progress on the federal level has been lagging, it has led more states to try and do their part to reduce both air pollution and cut carbon emissions.   

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has made improving New Mexico’s air quality an increasingly high priority and is positioning New Mexico to become a leader in clean energy.   

This year, the governor might have the chance to sign a bill into a law which will both improve New Mexico’s air quality and reduce the effects of climate change. This Clean Transportation Fuels Standard (HB 41) incentivizes companies to produce cleaner transportation fuels, which will reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions and improve New Mexico’s air quality. Production of cleaner fuels means less air pollution, and less air pollution means better chronic respiratory health for the citizens of New Mexico.  

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the transportation sector is the largest contributor of GHG emissions in the country. These emissions directly worsen our air quality. The EPA reports that carbon dioxide makes up almost 80 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, the transportation sector, encompassing cars, buses, fleets of trucks, and planes, is an enormous producer of carbon dioxide.  

This is why I support the Clean Transportation Fuels Standard.  It will reduce the carbon emissions of the largest carbon-emitting sector in the U.S., and the cost savings and positive results for public health will be felt by all.  

Shelley Mann-lev  

Executive director, New Mexico Health Professionals for Climate Action

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Second driest state 

Editor: 

In the 1950s, Albuquerque advertising claimed that it had the same amount of water under and around it as Lake Superior had in it.  

Most Albuquerque developments at the time had back east vegetation around each track home. Some still have covenants about how much watered greenery they must have.  

Lake Superior is still the second largest lake in the world, with a volume of 2,900 cubic miles of water. Albuquerque has modified it’s promoters’ fairy tale.  

Albuquerque former prodigious water waste at least was largely returned to the rio for stream flow and to recharge the now shrinking water table.  

The village of Los Lunas and supporters have, for years, been buying/transferring water rights from valley farms, which will turn the valley brown as the drought continues.  

If the village of Los Lunas continues the water deal with Niagara that plastic bottled fluid will flush toilets in other areas for their return flow to their river, their people, their wild life.  

We are not sitting on 2,900 cubic miles of water in the second driest state.  

Ken Wright 

Bosque 

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