New NM Governor Eliminates 3% GHG Cut Rule, Along With Tighter Standards For Dairy Waste Discharge

[hatrack]

Acting on a campaign promise, New Mexico’s new Republican governor, Susana Martinez, has scuttled a state regulation requiring annual 3 percent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. A second environmental rule intended to control the discharge of waste from dairies in southern New Mexico was also dropped before publication. A different state rule that caps greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources like power plants remains in effect for the time being.

During her campaign, Governor Martinez described the regulation of heat-trapping emissions as burdensome for industry and harmful to the state’s economy. Her swift action upon taking office comes as the newly elected governors of two other southwestern states, Arizona and California, are setting a different tone, firmly advocating greater reliance on clean energy.

Governor Martinez, who received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests, has also said that she does not believe that science has clearly established a link between climate change and human activity. As if to emphasize that point, on Thursday she appointed the geologist and former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, another skeptic, as secretary of the state’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department.

The measure on cutting emissions by 3 percent was struck on Tuesday, when the governor’s office instructed a senior official at the state’s records center not to publish it in the next state register, to be issued on Jan. 14.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07emit.html?_r=1

[villager]

1. How did New Mexico get duped into voting for this kook?

:shrug:

[abqmufc]

2. Her campaign was run on anti Richardson slogans and backed by oil money from Texas.

Most of her stump speeches were typically ranting about how Governor Bill Richardson was a crook, ineffective, and wasted resources. She promised tough immigration, tough on drugs (being from the El Paso region she touted her tough stance at stoping the drug wars in Southern New Mexico). She touted her opponent as being just a Richardson tool.

She touted she would be the first latino female governor in the USA.

Most importantly she had the backing of every oil company in Texas as well as through out the USA as she has promised to allow economic recovery to come in the way of mining and drilling. She is paving the way that nothing will stand in her way.

[joshcryer]

3. Shame, too, NM has a lot of desert land that would be quite ideal for CSP.