Are New Mexico’s Leaders Looking to Import California’s Natural Gas Ban?

October 3, 2019

New Mexico has already followed California down the radical environmental road of expensive renewable mandates and costly vehicle emissions.

Are there any California ideas New Mexico’s leaders won’t embrace?

That’s the question on the mind of many in the Land of Enchantment after a recent story in the Washington Times. While there are many interesting points about Governor Lujan Grisham and her dealings with the energy industry, there is one part of the article that stands out.

Not only is New Mexico part of the 25-state U.S. Climate Alliance, but state officials participated in an off-the-record blue-state conference in July held by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a Keystone XL pipeline foe and advocate for fossil-fuel divestment, where topics included how to “reduce and eliminate petroleum and natural gas.”

“The top line Challenge-Opportunity is to move away from the use of natural gas in buildings as a first priority, then electricity, and industry, while simultaneously moving quickly to move transportation systems off petroleum,” said a background memo for the meeting at the RBF’s Pocantico Center in New York.

Why did New Mexico officials participate in a meeting where the first priority is to remove natural gas from buildings? This is a shocking development considering New Mexico is one of the nation’s leading producers of natural gas and where two-thirds of the state’s homes use it to keep warm.

It was just a few months ago Berkeley, California issued a ban on natural gas for new buildings. Perhaps this is another California dream Santa Fe’s eco-left is looking to turn into reality for New Mexico.