Climate Change: The Faster We Get on it, The Better for Everyone
Public comments submitted by Mary-Charlotte Domandi,
Producer and Host, The Santa Fe Radio Cafe
KSFR 101.1 FM, Santa Fe Public Radio
I first became aware of how serious the climate change problem was about five years ago when I started spending time socially with a group of scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratories. There’s a terrific program, not open to the public, where LANL brings in top scientists from all over the country, MIT, Rice, University of California, and so on, to give lectures to the scientists here. And my friends were continually talking about the speakers who came in to talk about energy.
There was at that time, no discussion in those lectures about whether or not climate change was real and man-made—that was already established. It was all about how we were going to get off of fossil fuels, and how many terrawatts of energy each non-carbon-emitting source could yield, and what research was most promising, and what was the time line.
I was noticing at that time the difference between what I was hearing in these conversations and what was in the media. To be sure, there have always been reporters in the media whose work was based on science, but there was so much other noise that was based on opinion or wishful thinking. I felt, and still feel, that it’s like we were on the Titanic heading for the iceberg, and all the people on deck are yelling to the captain, ‘Turn hard to the right or we’ll crash,‘ while the people below deck are saying, ‘This boat is perfectly safe, and I’d like some more sugar for my tea.‘
It’s human nature that we think that the way it was when we were young will be the way it is for our kids and their kids. But it’s not like that. It’s human nature to think that what is real is what we see with our five senses, and look, we’ve had a nice rainy summer in Santa Fe, so what’s the problem? It’s human nature not to want regulations—nobody wants to be told what to do. But the situation we’re in is extreme and dangerous, like heading for the iceberg (only by the time we’re done there might not be any icebergs left). We must trust science the way we have to trust a team of doctors who give a diagnosis that we don’t like. It’s better to take the best known treatment than to pretend that the illness not there-even if we’re feeling fine today.
I would like to say in closing, that this is an opportunity for New Mexicans to do three things:
1) do our state’s share to reduce carbon dioxide
2) set an example to the rest of the states that we understand climate change and are doing something about it, which they can then follow until enough states have it, then the feds can take real action
3) foster a clean energy economy in the sunny, windy state of New Mexico. As testimony that will be heard this week will confirm, clean energy generation and efficiency technology is a $500 billion industry already, and will grow into the trillions. New Mexico deserves its share of that pie, and the faster we get on it, the better for everyone.