Gov. Lujan Grisham’s backing of hydrogen hub is a disappointment
Governor Michelle LujanGrisham, I am so very disappointed in you. I voted for you and was very impressed with your efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic. However, your passionate support and strong-arm tactics in support of the deeply flawed hydrogen hub has really disturbed me.
Climate change is so serious that I cannot not support you in our upcoming election. You are smart enough and thoughtful enough to become a national leader in addressing climate change. There is a total absence of leadership at the national level, including our president, who continues to lease our public lands for oil and gas drilling. COP 25 was a complete failure of all governments to treat climate change seriously. We now have massive hurricanes in the Southeast, extreme tornados in the Midwest and raging forest fires in the Mountain West and California. The Arctic is melting and spewing methane into the atmosphere, and Greenland and Antarctic glaciers are melting and already raising the sea level.
You could have taken a leadership role by implementing a carbon tax and using that income to transition New Mexico completely to renewable energy and even become an exporter to Phoenix and Los Angeles — if only you had used your intelligence and courage to do so.
The hydrogen hub is a deeply flawed idea that must have been foisted on you by fossil fuel interests. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states unequivocally that it would take more natural gas energy to create a given amount of blue hydrogen energy. And that does not count the energy cost of trying to get the waste CO2 buried in the ground. If you want to explore creating green hydrogen from fracked wastewater or underground saline waters, then give our national labs a grant to research the possibility. If you have truly sold your soul to the fossil fuel industry, resign and hire yourself out at a six-figure salary to some fossil fuel giant, and let the Lieutenant Governor become the climate leader New Mexico needs.