Examine the impact

The exuberance of state officials over rising revenues from oil and gas surely should be balanced by the costs that this industry is imposing on the state and on the world. The boom economy is requiring local governments to try to keep up with highway safety, with inflationary costs for residents and with health effects from air pollutants. The state is still paying tens of millions of dollars for the collapsed brine well in Carlsbad. Methane is pouring from oil and gas operations, with the pollutant responsible for 25 percent of all of the climate change that we are now experiencing. And future emissions of methane, along with the carbon dioxide released from burning oil and gas, will exacerbate the climate emergency in which we are all immersed.

The state should comprehensively examine all of the impacts of oil and gas development, including effects on health, water supplies, wildlife, safety and existing economies. Reporting on the benefits should be tempered with these facts.

Denise Fort professor emerita UNM School of Law Santa Fe