Saturday, January 07, 2006

Climate Change

My first exposures to the subject of Climate Change came in the early 1990's. I had just been reelected as State Land commissioner and the first murmuring about greenhouse gases and climate change were occurring. I invited some scientists for Los Alamos to come to one of the Land Office brown-bag lunch seminars that I had started. I can't remember the man's name but he put forth a model of what would happen to New Mexico if the Earth's temperature started rising. So far, he seems to have been clairvoyant. I remember at the time that these theories were greeted with downright insults from the energy industry and many political leaders, especially in Washington and the first President Bush administration.

The Albuquerque Journal ran a story this morning that is alarming. It pretty much shows that an analysis by State government officials is pessimistic when it comes to climate change. New Mexico will and maybe already is changing. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that we are suffering from severe drought and that our ski industry is on its knees.

I hope this political season will see a lot of debate on this issue. I plan on talking about it a lot in my campaign and if I am painted as radical for it then I accept the label.

1 comment:

soyChapin said...

In this day and age, radical is the term "they" use to vent their anger at free thinking individuals who are smart enough to acknowledge that God entrusted us a conscience, and a brain to search for answers, and keep sking questions.

Even latin americans like me are so angry at the current president for backing off the Kyoto Protocol as soon as he took office.

Some other latin bloggers living in the US have shared our thoughts on how even the recent hurricanes could be this administrations fault for not caring at all about global warming.