Bishops call for stronger methane rules
We must care for one another and future generations. Caring for neighbors and God’s creation is a sacred and moral duty. That is why the oil and gas air pollution rules are so important in our state. In September, the Environmental Improvement Board will finalize regulations to cut ozone-forming volatile organic compounds and methane, helping protect our air and climate and the health of New Mexico families. With a few key improvements, these rules can ensure we really are protecting our community, family, mothers’, fathers’ and children’s health and well-being.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the New Mexico Environment Department have worked hard to respond to concerns and needs of people in our state in order to care for what Pope Francis calls Our Common Home.
Largely avoidable oil and gas emissions from leaks can lead to serious health problems for front-line communities. Emissions from oil and gas production contain toxic, even deadly, gases like hydrogen sulfide, toluene, xylene and benzene. Methane leaks also allow volatile organic compounds to be released. These volatile organic compounds are one of the main building blocks of ozone pollution, which can harm the respiratory system, trigger asthma attacks and worsen emphysema, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
Ozone is already hitting New Mexico’s major oil and gas producing counties hard and exposing front-line communities to unhealthy levels of pollution according to the state’s air-quality monitors. Rural communities, tribal communities, children and the elderly are especially vulnerable and impacted by pollution from oil and gas operations, which the American Lung Association
has pointed out for years.
Methane pollution also contributes to accelerated climate change and an uncertain future for New Mexico’s children. In Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si: On Care of Our Common Home, we are instructed that care for creation and life are not optional choices. Here in New Mexico, this means addressing methane waste, which is a potent greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the near term as reported by the Environmental Defense Fund in “Methane: A crucial opportunity in the climate fight” and referenced by the recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report. Human-caused methane is responsible for at least 25 percent of today’s global warming, the Environmental Defense Fund estimates in a BBC article, “The search for the world’s largest methane sources.” New Mexicans are already experiencing severe impacts of climate change — harming our health, air, land, water and economy.
While the environment department has put forward a strong proposal, three key additions are critical to meet Lujan Grisham’s goal of enacting “the country’s toughest methane and air pollution rules.” The final rules must protect those living closest to development by requiring more frequent inspections to find and fix leaks; require operators to control pollution during the completion of an oil or gas well or when they redevelop an existing well; and strengthen requirements to cut pollution from pneumatic controllers that are used in oil and gas production.
We must care for the common good. Pope Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate teaches that the common good requires concrete action on behalf of others. “It is the good of “all of us,” made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society.” We live in a moment when there are ways to put our sacred teachings from religious traditions into action. Creating strong methane rules is an action that we can do in New Mexico to care for the community of life and the common good.