New Mexico has in the past benefited from its vast reserves of fossil fuels. The state has received massive amounts in taxes from the corporations that have mined those very resources. The state government has even managed to benefit as public opinion and policy has shifted in a more environmentally friendly direction. In 2019, the Energy Transition Act was passed and since then New Mexico has been investing more in clean energy. Some though, have asked whether or not New Mexicans have actually benefited from any of the money coming in.
The clear answer is that they have. The presence of so much industry does a lot to create jobs in the state for a great many people. Not just jobs like working at an oil derrick or a solar panel manufacturer, but secondary jobs such as road construction and restaurants. The amount of secondary and tertiary jobs the energy sector has created just by being there is in all honesty impossible to quantify.
The tax revenue brought in also helps by giving the state money to improve its infrastructure, building new roads, repairing old ones, as well as programs to help the poor. Since clean energy has begun to take over, New Mexicans get the additional benefit of cleaner air and the associated improvements to overall health.
However, that doesn’t mean that it is all sunshine and roses. While that shift in energy production has led to many positive benefits for the state’s residents, it has created a couple of downsides as well. One of them is displacement.
As most know, wind farms and solar take up massive amounts of land. It takes thousands of acres of either to generate what a fossil plant or especially a nuclear plant can do with a dozen or so. That isn’t to say that the land can’t be reclaimed to an extent. Cattle can graze around windmills and shorter grasses at least can grow around a solar farm. And of course, New Mexico has plenty of deserts to place these renewable power generators in, making the impact on the locals relatively small.
However, some still have lost access to land because of the construction and the additional infrastructure that is needed to get the material out to those remote sites. Also, let’s be honest, not everyone likes the site of those windmills or the solar panels reflecting all that sun. That means the locals have to deal with loss of land and loss of peace and tranquility that they had previously taken for granted.
And this brings us to the real problem we’d like to focus on here. Whether it’s fossil fuels, or wind and solar, no one has bothered asking the locals what they think about everything going on. What kind of power do they want? Would they rather have the windmills along the roads or the smokestacks in the cities? Or maybe they would rather have nuclear. As things currently stand, the state just makes deals with the energy companies with nothing more than lip service to the will of the citizens. They offer tax breaks and companies come. Sometimes it’s hard to see where the government stops and the company starts.
Instead, wouldn’t it be better to ask the people what sort of power they’d like to have? What kind of trade-offs do they want to make since they are the ones most affected by them? Do they want an obstructed view and cleaner air, or dirty air but no loss of trails to explore? Or good views, clean air, but a slight risk of a significant accident?
Naturally, one might be concerned that the average person isn’t equipped to make those decisions. All right, equip them. Take the time to actually educate people without talking down to them. Give them the data and treat them like people capable of making decisions on their own. Show people the data, the good, the bad, and the ugly of all the options. Once they have that data, they could actually make an informed decision and from there, they could let the state government and companies work out the particulars.
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