Good Thinking at the Roundhouse

A nasty old saw of political cynics used to hold that if you want to find the ten dumbest people in the country, the first place to go would be to any state legislature and then to any city hall. These days, though, the gravity of dumbness and nitwittery has centered itself in the bedlam of D.C. Much of the best thinking on environmental, social and urban issues is being done by local governments. At the New Mexico Legislature right now, for instance, important ideas on climate change, public health and creating a sustainable future are flourishing.

A bill to create a statewide Public Health and Climate Program and a Public Health and Climate Resiliency Fund seems to be gaining winning support in both the Senate and the House. Sponsored by Representative Reena Szczepanski and Senator Liz Stefanics. And the bill has strong support from activist groups like New Mexico Voice’s for Children.

Voices for Children contends that, “the health of New Mexicans is increasingly being harmed by climate change, from increasing extreme weather events and drought, to more intense wildfires and more disease-spreading mosquitoes.” This tumultuous and hazardous climate reality impacts all of us, with the greatest harms burdening children and low-income families. Not only do they suffer serious “heat stress, the spread of infectious diseases, worsening lung and heart disease, and allergies,” they also face deepening challenges such as financial and food insecurity and a deterioration of overall well-being,” Voices says. Emergency room visits, Voices report, have doubled for “heat-related illnesses in New Mexico between 2009 and 2019 and likely doubled again between 2019 and 2023.”

The Szczepanski-Stefanics bill is a complete and heroic about-face from decades of climate change denial that has threatened Americans of all classes and cultures with financial peril, physical debilitation and emotional trauma. In creating a statewide Public Health and Climate Program, and adding it to the Public Health Act, the bill acknowledges the obvious, at long last, that there is an undeniable link between environmental upheaval and the health and well being of the public. And more than that, the bill would create a mechanism to help prepare us all to meet increasingly likely and dangerous climate-change episodes in our state.

The bill lays out a series of actions to “improve interagency collaboration” focused on “health equity; improving surveillance for (rapidly) assessing excess injuries and deaths related to ongoing climate change and extreme weather; … recommending appropriate updates to health and safety standards; … making health-informed decisions about current and future climate impacts; … (and) integrating the latest climate and public health science into emergency preparedness programs.”

To do that, the bill would create a “public health and climate resiliency fund” to give grants of up to $250,000 to local and tribal governments to do public health environmental emergency planning, with an emphasis on cultural and economic equity, that would plan for making “cool-air, smoke, flood and wildfire shelters,” “backup generators and electricity storage facilities in libraries, government building, schools and community centers,” and such “fire safety measures” as “clearing brush for the elderly and people with disabilities, widening roads for evacuation and burying power lines.”

According to Conservation Voters of New Mexico, the 2024 legislative session is displaying much good thinking with many bills in the works to shore up our state’s preparedness to face the many deadly side effects of a rapidly warming atmosphere. These bills include measures to create a “geothermal electricity generation tax credit” to take advantage of New Mexico’s sixth-place national ranking for geothermal potential; creating tax credits to help in the installation of renewable energy storage systems; tax credits for operating electric vehicles and maintaining renewable energy transportation systems; adding an environmental rights or “green amendment” to the New Mexico constitution; increasing funding for the Conservation Legacy Permanent Fund; creating a working group to study the potential for a statewide composting initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from waste currently sent to landfills; and increasing funds to enforce water regulations and increase “water mapping programs.”

I expect that as long as climate-change deniers remain out of power in New Mexico, legislative sessions will keep seeing bills designed with ever more precision to thwart environmental exploitation, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and promote the health and vitality of children, families and the wild world around us.

Let’s back such good ideas with all the energy and enthusiasm we can muster.

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it

(Image of Capitol Rotunda by Jim Bowen.)