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funding for new mexico infocus provided by the mccune charitable foundation and viewers like you this week on new mexico infocus we begin our look at what the biden climate plan means for new mexico we need to get off of oil and gas revenue and we need to do that now and the way to do that is changing the tax system plus the first lady of the navajo nation talks about missing and murdered indigenous women new mexico infocus starts now [Music] thanks for joining us this week i'm your host gene grant kovitt continues to circumscribe the boundaries of life in 2021 at the roundhouse a positive case among house republicans riled an already rancorous environment and vaccine shortages have rained in ambitious plans to reopen schools in some parts of the state the line will get up both of those issues as well as a grim outlook for irrigation season in the rio grande we have a tree of great interviews this week in addition to the biden climate plan and missing and murdered indigenous women we'll also focus on the ethics of delivering vaccine in a state like new mexico we start with the line and cautious steps towards going back to school there's hardly anyone who is arguing kids learn better online and so new mexico is anxious to get students back into the classroom our new president promised within 100 days and the governor wants to let students return as early as this coming monday can it be done and more importantly can it be done safely here to parse that issue is our line opinion panel we welcome back attorney and public safety analyst ed pereira good to see you again ed and line regulars tom garrity and sophie martin join us this week as well ed starting with you albuquerque public schools met this week decided to kick the can down the road for another two weeks while trying to convince the state that to still allow their athletes to compete while virtual learning goes on a little longer here's my question the governor has given the go-ahead to school districts but do they have the data they need to make this decision gee there's a lot of there's a lot of data out there and you're hitting you're hearing both sides of the story and depending on who you're who you're talking to there's a group who really wants to get these schools opened up and for those schools for those individuals or those groups parents and otherwise uh who are really supporting opening up the schools to to some degree i think they review the data as as positive on their behalf some of the numbers that have that have come out is of 1100 or so tests that have been given uh probably 0.04 percent actually came back positive so they're saying the number of people have tested within aps they're just not seeing the problem there and also nationally we're seeing the from the experts are saying maybe it's not that big of a issue of a problem when it comes to the spread of this uh this virus to reopen some of the schools to to some degree so that's the argument on one side the argument on the other side clearly are the teachers are saying well hold on here uh you know when we bring students in together even with safe safety practices uh we we're still at risk uh you know our our families are at risk we come to campus uh and we go home and we may uh expose others to the virus so there's the concern of both both sides i guess the the short of it is you know uh the where you stand depends on which side of the table that you're sitting on and so and i think that's that's where we're at now with the aps argument that's sticky i like the way you put that i really like the way you put that sophie obviously the the uh when i say i'm not trying to be cute here vaccinations is obviously you know the word of the day here for teachers should all teachers be moved to the front of the line to have some comfort for parents and everybody else you know i think there's some important balance that needs to be struck there uh and i and i it makes me think of actually there's a there's an interesting piece in the new mexican about what santa fe prep which admittedly had probably has more resources than our public schools what santa fe prep has done and and they've been able to um put in place a system that seems pretty rational um but part of what's going on there is that their teachers have been vaccinated they were able to get their teachers vaccinated in advance of reopening and that i think i think makes a huge difference there is something i do i do want to point out though that um you know education weekly has had a series running just earlier this week uh earlier this month but it's still the beginning of the month um and one of the things that's come out is that not every child does poorly with remote learning that that a number of children actually do better and have said you know my grades are improving my focus has improved i'm not wasting time in the way that i might have at school that seems like a very motivated child i might have been good at that too certainly that's not true for everyone um but you know one of the things i have to give new mexico credit for is that unlike what i hear of some other states it wasn't governor you know executive mandating you will open right it is all right schools you have an opportunity put your plans together and some school systems in new mexico i think is it um las vegas i think is saying yeah not not for the rest of the school year let's just put it out there we're not going to open now um different schools are looking at different plans and it's not just sort of wave wand and we're open there's a lot that has to happen before a particular district can open going back to vaccines it seems to me that obviously that would make a big difference in terms of the the comfort level of the and the safety of this of the of the educators right and not just the educators but the bus drivers the janitors that you know everyone who works in that system i think we we forget sometimes and i think it's important to remind ourselves we are talking about teachers but they are also talking about everyone else who goes into work to make uh the schools happen good points there hey tom interestingly when i read a journal article some of the criteria counties that are read like aps just mentioned 25 percent of in-person staff will have to be tested weekly schools in yellow and green counties which currently is just harding in union county right now 12.5 of its staff is going to be have to be tested each week but the problem is they're having trouble getting to 10 percent on the testing at this point can we really ramp up where we need to be to be ready to go with this in a couple of weeks well i i think in some areas you can but in large part you know what we saw i think with the governor's uh declaration in the state of the state was that she opened up the bridge to nowhere um you know as far as saying okay great let's go ahead and open up schools and really kind of shifted the responsibility to the schools who are going oh hey how are we going to hit testing how does red yellow green kind of impact us and by the way where do we find uh 1200 school bus drivers as far as in the albuquerque public schools so i think that there are a lot of items that school districts were surprised with because they thought they were going to have additional time uh with respect to you know getting ramped up and uh you know back up up up and running very s you know they had some time but that that runway was basically taken away with that february 8th you know opportunity it wasn't a mandate it was just an opportunity for schools and what it's really going to test though is the ability for school districts to communicate not just with their teachers but also with the parents in the community because there's all of a sudden expectation that you know the normal of you know remote learning is about to change right and school districts big or small need to be able to manage that narrative right now or they'll have the mob rule kind of take over and set the narrative for them that's right you boy i'll tell you what you just really hit a home run there i agree 100 hey sophie we are top three in the country for testing right now yay new mexico uh it does that make a difference i mean we're doing okay compared to most listen we're doing okay on testing we're also doing really i think well uh more than okay on testing i think we're doing well on vaccination rates um this state has been um you know out front uh in in most areas since the start of the pandemic but but being number three being up there doesn't necessarily mean that we have all that we need why is testing important it helps to give us a sense of what percentage of the population is effective um epidemiologists can extrapolate from that from the smaller sample size to you know how many people might actually have it what the spread is in the state when we look at the educational system testing is essential in other ways i mean there's you know there's a requirement for schools that open and that if four kids in your four kids are in a classroom four kids at your school now i'm going to admit that i can't remember which one it is but i bet it's school is the threshold at which point everyone goes home and if there's not testing you don't know necessarily that you've met that threshold and that leaves everyone at that school less safe good point there hey ed we've got just about a minute here i want you to pick up on that as well um uh president biden's pledge does that make a difference or is that just you know inauguration day talk and that pledge for what gene uh have everyone 100 days have everybody back in school in the first hundred days well i i just gene we really yeah we don't want to move too quickly but we want to move steadily i think you know again there's still a lot of concerns out here with regard to the last question as far as where we rank on on testing just look back to a month to two months ago when we were spiking when we had a very serious problem so i think the testing is important the testing provides us some data on which to make some of our some of the decisions that need to be made but we don't want to move too quickly i know there's just i know there's this push to it but i'm from the camp that we we don't want to jump too far ahead we want to move when we're when we're ready i like a pledge i think pledging isn't a promise but it sets a goal for us i think the pledge is fine let's move in that direction let's continue to follow the data and let's see where we're at there you go have to wrap that up there this group is back in a few minutes talk about covid at the roundhouse and the long contentious road ahead for lawmakers diversifying the economy is something that has often on been a strategy in new mexico for a long long time it hasn't occurred to the extent that a lot of people would like new mexico's missing and murdered indigenous women and relatives task force recently released a report outlining its findings and recommendations to the governor and legislature governor lujan grisham created the task force in 2019 to chart a path to addressing the crisis the group's 64-page report shows a need for data collection resources improved reporting of cases in a number of areas of need including support for families violence against women and human trafficking continue to be contributing factors to missing and murdered indigenous people cases in the state new mexico's 19 pueblos apache tribes and the navajo nation are working on ways to address the issue correspondent antonia gonzalez talks with the first lady of the navajo nation about her work on the task force and what members need from the legislature this session joining us now is the first lady of the navajo nation thank you so much for joining us here on new mexico in focus um please introduce yourself yesterday my name is pathelyanes i'm the first lady of the navajo nation that's how i relate to my navajo all right thank you so much and i wanted to share or have you share a little bit about the very important um serious work of missing and murdered indigenous people it is a really tough topic for the navajo nation families and indigenous people across the united states to talk about but it's also a very important issue can you share some of your work you're doing on task forces both in new mexico and in arizona well for new mexico i've been working with the task force i was appointed um october of last year and we just ended our task for studies for the first year in november of 2020 so it went 2019 to 2020 and um for the nabho nation from the office of the first lady and second lady a lot of our efforts have been revolving around just educating the public on mmiw and then as well as uh human trafficking because there's a connection there definitely but it's not one in the same and then for the arizona um human and the other one that we've been reaching out to is uh the arizona governor's uh human trafficking and yeah human trafficking um advisory council and then new mexico human trafficking task force so it's been a lot of efforts of partnering with them to educate the public on some of these items and the task force here in new mexico recently released a report of the work and recommendations for the governor and also new mexico state lawmakers what is the top priority that the task force found that needs to be done to address missing and murdered indigenous people in new mexico it would be data collection um you know there's uh you're talking about numerous tribes and pueblos in new mexico and every one of those tribes and problems we have our own tribal justice systems everybody has their own laws and so as sovereign nations it's really something that needs to be addressed almost internally but then of course we want to keep support of the state of new mexico so it would be a partnership across jurisdictions and also with the federal institutions as well and how does law enforcement looking at jurisdictions play because there are a number of tribes in new mexico the navajo nation apache tribes and the pueblo communities all sovereign nations like you said with different laws language culture history and then working not only just locally on the state and national level so how is working with law enforcement why is that key in addressing this issue you know a lot of it starts with reporting and the second step in that is the actual classifications and so when you're looking at different databases they don't all collect the same types of information and the other important factor here is accessibility who gets access to these data collection centers and how are they utilized and that's really been the top two findings i think from the report itself so when we're talking about collaborations and partnering uh we can't force another jurisdiction or you know across that even from border towns like florida nation we wouldn't be able to like strong our any border town or any county or any state court system or pd to give us information so it really has to be done in a collaborative effort and that's been i think that's always been um the the greatest barrier maybe and part of the task force not only looking at these issues is a lack of resources what kind of resources are needed um to look study and create a database and just keep this movement of mmi um w and other uh missing persons going in terms of database i think uh for the tribes ourselves you know it's because it's so for for when for example some of our tribal members there they have memberships or they're either married or have children in other tribal communities so when you have two tribal communities who don't share the same type of the same database it's really hard to even connect in those ways so maybe it's that's where that shared those shared agreements to have access to each other's uh reporting databases that's very important but the other one that we see firsthand i guess on tribal communities is just the reluctance to even report certain things to law enforcement and then beyond that would just be um there's a great uh need for education i think of the public on how um the criminal justice system operates on each tribal system and then of course you have to look at um how things operate off the nat on if things occur if there's an incident that occurs off the nation you're looking at either working with a city a county or state um a justice system and then of course when the federal justice system gets involved that's a whole different layer of items that so it's not so every case is not always going to be the same and i think that's where there's a lot of confusion that sets in place and it's where a lot of distrust happens uh but there needs to be definitely a great amount of education to the public on that and what are what is the importance of having families involved in the process what kind of things are you hearing from families and we're not just talking about um you know just older women the navajo nation very unfortunately lost ashland mike which was um you know internationally known and the community came together to remember her and it was such a hard time on not only the navajo nation but other tribes across the country relating to these different types of cases so what are you hearing from families for families it's just a lot of support services wrapped around services comprehensive services that's really what's needed um during the time when an incident occurs and then there's also need for services for returning survivors so families do need support when um a member of their family returns home and that's usually um sometimes that's left out of the conversations but we definitely heard from some families who are struggling with that right now and can you share some information about some of the work the navajo nation in particular is doing on missing and murdered indigenous people there's like a lot of um education and prevention efforts you see a lot more on that and um in the future we would like to see more in terms of i guess reporting but of course in order for some for anybody to report anything they need to be they need to know what it is uh that they're looking for and how some of these things occur and so and i think that's something maybe that's the reason why we don't have many people reporting because they don't know what it is that they're really seeing and witnessing happening in their own communities and is there any resource that people should reach out to or look to if they're in need of assistance we'll be posting uh resource links on our new website for the office of the first lady second lady and so that's where a lot of families will be and will definitely be and making that known during the virtual event we'll have a website and then forthcoming app so they'll always have access to those on there well first lady thank you so much for joining us and talking about this very important and hard issue that many families and tribes across the country including the navajo nation are working on thank you been a strange week at the roundhouse in santa fe just before last week's episode aired we learned a number a member excuse me of house republican caucus tested positive for covet 19. the group of 25 conservative lawmakers has been the most critical of both the governor's response to the pandemic and now the largely online nature of the session itself that didn't sit while the democratic speaker of the house brian egolf who accused house republicans of being reckless with regard to public health they sued we're still waiting for a supreme court opinion on the house rules possibly next week and here we are not even halfway through the session and sophie perhaps the most surprising thing about the sessions this week they've been relatively civil you know mr eagle eased up on his three in the people chamber rule and about half the republicans showed up in person what do you make of this whole dust up is this just like you can't tell us what to do so we're just gonna do what's you know what's not right what how do you make what's going on you know some of some of this is posturing some of it is is sort of virtue signaling on both sides right but what neither but what neither party really has control over let's face it is the pandemic itself and just like we've seen for all of us for the last basically year dealing with the pandemic adding the pandemic on top of everything you already have to do in this case in a 60-day session it was just bound to add extra conflict um extra opportunities for chest pounding etc i think for frankly you know message to legislators i i think that for the general public and the new mexico electorate we want to see action we want to see work happening and this kind of squabbling is is more than unfortunate it is a distraction from the work that really needs to get done and and i will say that work is getting done i mean we've seen some important bills uh filed right off the bat a number of bills that that democrats have been trying to get um past the governor's desk let's put it that way that they couldn't get past governor martinez that that um governor lujan grisham has indicated she will sign and so i think we're going to see some real progress uh on some of those bills early on you know we're already seeing progress but but the big work the co-state's code response etc um that's i think going to be a big focus of what the electorate wants to see happen um and that's gotta that's gotta get rolling good point there hey ed interestingly um we're just under 2 000 coronavirus tests conducted at the roundhouse and they began on-site testing on january 15th and as the as we know now the reporting they've had just five positive test results who are percent does that make a difference to you i mean does that say to you that republicans are in fact taking care because if they weren't we'd have a whole lot more cases than than this and i'll remind folks our average statewide is seven percent versus the zero point four percent we're seeing up in the roundhouse well gene this is a new environment and it's a it's it's not part of the general population but it could be the starting point if we're not careful if we recall back to the beginning of of this virus back in march april may june locally not many people knew anyone who had contracted the virus but as time went on more and more people knew more and more people who had the virus so it started from somewhere so we want to be careful and not to get too comfortable with the fact that only so many people so many tests only so many people that 0.044 that you mentioned uh has come back positive we want to take advantage of that and look at that in a positive way but not to take it for granted and and loosen up on on the precautions that we all need to take my concern would be that we take some comfort the positivity rate is low and then we move in the opposite direction by not taking the necessary steps that's going to keep that uh number as low as the the initial results you know legislators are not required to be tested and if we're not if we're not testing we're not really able to to get accurate measurements um and the republican legislators in particular have pushed back against the testing program and so when we say .04 two things one is this is for by and large a a white collar group that um you know not exclusively but but in general legislators and their staff um would be expected to reflect um the the transmission rates that of people who are able to protect themselves stay home etc as opposed to our frontline workers who are really at greater risk we see people of color at greater risk for underrepresented communities at greater risk for coveted infection um but but i have to point out this is not a comprehensive plan legislators can choose to opt out of being tested and as we know many people are asymptomatic so i'm not sure that that figure really means that much i appreciate that that's that's why they call that context go ahead so just very quick sophie just very quickly yeah and when you look at the data the number of people that one person who test positive can affect or just enormous exponential and so caution caution caution don't take comfort in the low numbers at this point and i think you guys are describing quite well where brian egolf is coming from there's there's no there's no end of frustration for this man and sometimes some of the comments he's made about this uh sort of get at that but tom let me ask you this this is also interesting it came out last week that um during the first three days of the session there was a positive case there and nobody knew it and given the restrictions for who can be in the capital should a positive test have been uh announced right away well you know in in this age transparency is really key so you know i i think that the more transparency that's out there uh the better so yes there's a short answer to that uh longer answer is is that i think that what we've seen at the roundhouse has been so far a responsible approach now i'm not saying that the democrats are right the republicans are wrong i think the republicans have a lot of great points that they raised before the supreme court they just didn't raise them the best way possible so and of those points as far as going remote does that really provide residents in the rural part of the state who tend to be more right-leaning than left uh have true access to participate in all of the proceedings uh and then the second is uh as far as just you know going back to santa fe is what happened to the santa fe convention center i thought they were supposed to open up the convention center to you know make everything a lot more accessible um so you know i think that there is a lot of confusion out there right now i think everybody's kind of taking that chill pill and is kind of you know saying okay great we've all made our points now maybe we can focus on legislation uh but my hope is is that you know perhaps the you know uh that there will be uh just a little bit more consistency in the rule making between the house and the senate because i think that having the consistent rules as far as the rules that bind to the senate are the same rules that bind the house will help to kind of calm the overall kind of sense of anxiety that tends to make the headlines eddie just got a little bit under a minute here just a quick question about this supreme court you mentioned earlier what's your sense of their chances honestly you know this idea that it's unconstitutional to not physically be in santa fe is is that a winner it really looks like the courts recently in a number of different cases and i'm sure the court will follow here uh is that this pandemic has created a unique situation where all members of society all walks of life have to make those adjustments in in the interest of public safety and public health i think if the the the issue is about public health and the health of those participants uh in the legislature both both legislators and staff that the court will likely uphold any issue relating to adjustments in the interest of public safety got you there i have to hold our conversation there but in a similar vein and most especially with a shortage figuring out who gets a shot and who needs to wait is critical doing that job equitably can be especially challenging new mexico has already made some embarrassing gaffes as it rolled out its vaccine registration system as you might have read family members and friends of medical workers jumped the line early on and it's still an open question as to how thoroughly claims of comorbid mobility sorry you know the word i'm trying to say are being checked recently megan kamerick sat down virtually with gallaudet university philosophy professor and bioethicist teresa blankmeyer burke to work through some of those tough questions teresa there are concerns the distribution of the covid vaccine may not be as equitable and efficacious as bioethists bioethicists would have hoped as you see it is the vaccine being distributed ethically and equally are there any groups you wish had priority over others oh thank you for that question i think that the um the priorities that the cdc has put together are ethical priorities the devil is in the details so one question is of course we all want to reduce death and serious disease the other one is we want society to keep functioning but the big concern for many people is how do we reduce the burden that covid has on populations that are already being more stressed by covid and so one one thought is how do we identify these populations these are often people who are of lower socioeconomic status they're poor they may live in multi-generational housing they may not have access to food and other things so these communities also often don't have the healthcare infrastructure that we need so where are the vaccine sites how do we get this information out to these populations and are they accessible these are big priorities for new mexico let's say you had full control of who got the vaccine and when how would you make the vaccination effort fairer for all uh that's such a good question well i think that it's um of course not just up to me and even if it if i were told i could make the decision myself i would ask and include members of the populations who feel that they have been disregarded but one thing i think is important to do is to consider um where are these sites located but maybe even before that what's the infrastructure do we have enough of the vaccines in particular areas especially communities that have been hit hard vaccine locations that are easily accessible to people not just in terms of are they on a bus line do people have cars so they can get there but also what about people with disabilities is there signage for deaf people who who may not be able to speech read because people are wearing masks do we have entrances and exits with ramps rather than stairs and this is actually a problem with one of the sites i was just notified of this yesterday do we have um information that's accessible to people before they get on site so that they know what to expect and what to anticipate so these are some of the things that are important to people with disabilities that haven't really been considered not just here in new mexico i think new mexico is doing a pretty good job but nationally and we take it you have a copy of president biden's national covid response is there anything promising in the plan anything surprising um well i'm i'm excited about it it does take specific note of um people who are what we call under the social vulnerability index category i mean everyone can be assigned certain kinds of vulnerabilities depending on where they live what kind of resources they have access to and so forth and the biden plan has done has a particular effort to make sure that these populations that are often overlooked are not being overlooked there's a lot of attention being given to those communities and as a bioethicist one of the things i look at are values and how are the values of the american people represented in such a document how do these um get manifested in the choices and the priorities and whose lives and well-being are prioritized when there's so many competing interests whether it's economics and education and of course health and well-being do you feel like the document represents that so it's 200 pages long plus and i read through it very quickly a few nights ago um what i didn't see any flags so i'm encouraged and hopeful i will later this week be going through it with a fine-tooth comb and then let making recommendations to various people about my thoughts on this and and in particular since i do a lot of work with disability communities we'll look for how this supports and provides acknowledgement of the needs of people with disabilities let's compare what's happening in new mexico versus other states is there anything we should be modeling or anything we should be avoiding well actually i think new mexico is doing a really good job i'm most familiar with what's happening in dc and maryland and virginia because that is another place where i spend a lot of time and i'm familiar with that community one thing that new mexico has done differently than a lot of states is in the most recent vaccine allocation plan which is dated january 22nd new mexico actually makes specific reference to verify verification of employment and of qualifying conditions and i aske around because i i was told this might be a topic that would come up and i asked colleagues around the country and got some input also from international bioethicist colleagues and what they've said is this is very much an honor system in most locations now whether that will change remains to be seen because these vaccine allocation plans are shifting as we learn more about what works and what doesn't work but i was very pleased to see that in new mexico there is going to be verification of employment and then also that people with qualifying conditions should be prepared to verify medically what their conditions are of course this is tricky because it gets into issues of medical privacy so we have to be careful about that there have been reports of people line jumping the vaccination process they're sharing event codes meant for healthcare workers on the registration portal and coupled with that the system does rely on people to be truthful do you think these safeguards i guess we'll find out but you think that we have them here but that's not necessarily universal right now around the country not at this point so again i asked a number of colleagues about this in states in the northeast southeast west coast and midwest and everything that i received said so far it's on our system now line jumping um i think no matter what the context is we'll always have a few people who do that it's part of the free writer problem if you will but i think that we have to wait and see is this a problem that is a systemic issue if so then we really should fix it is it a once in a while thing if it's a once in a while thing or is this the best way for us to allocate are very limited resources in public health so it's it's partly i think a matter of how do we distribute the resources we have in the most effective ways and that may not be the best use of our resources at this point in time because verifying also takes resources and time and yeah yeah and it takes it away from the um the work that our public health department of health workers and those who are in supportive context are doing so the new mexico department of health is aiming to vaccinate people with at least one chronic condition in this phase that includes conditions it could be hard to verify like smoking or your bmi your body mass index should we be putting people who say smoke as one of those conditions ahead of someone was a serious crippling neurologic disorder okay so i am not a medical doctor i am a bioethicist so i'm not going to be able to make judgments about which medical conditions are more risky the cdc has done that and asip the advisory committee for immunization practices in the cdc has has looked at these conditions my understanding is that this list is shifting as we get more scientific information again that's a question for the scientists but the question you just asked me is when you have conditions that are hard to verify how much weight should we be giving people in terms of their self-report and i think again this is going to be it's it's tricky i think it's a matter of balancing the resources that we have what's the best use of our resources do we have the capacity to do this and again if we find that it's a systemic problem where somehow we're learning about many many many people who are doing this then we'd have to add other safeguards i actually don't know because i couldn't find my previous draft copy of the vaccination vaccine allocation plan but it might be worth exploring to see if there was verification language that was different on earlier drafts of this particular plan and i did not see anything about verification in the most recent cdc website about vaccines doesn't mean it isn't there but i looked for it and i couldn't find it so perhaps this will be an issue that comes up later as they respond to imperfections in the system what happens in a lot of systemic rollouts well teresa thank you so much for talking with us about this oh thank you absolutely my pleasure thank you climate change an important issue for new mexico but so is the economic impact of the oil and gas industry in the coming weeks we're looking at how president joe biden's executive order on climate change might affect the state correspondent laura pasqua spoke with new mexico state university economist jim peach about the pause on new oil and gas leases on some federal lands and the state's need to diversify away from fossil fuels welcome jim peach last week president joe biden signed an executive order regarding climate change and we'll be looking at many different aspects of the different provisions in this order but today we're talking about the paws on new oil and gas leases and some federal lands will this affect new mexico's economy in the short term in the long term what do you think complicated answer but i'll be quick about it uh the portion of the executive order that uh everybody's concerned about is section 208 that uh the moratorium on new leases on federal land there was a previous order from the secretary of the interior the acting secretary and we can talk about that later this particular order does not uh address permit it does not restrict permits uh 97 of the federal land that's worth leasing has already been leased and so this this particular order won't have much of an effect uh we can talk about the previous order from the secretary of the interior i would put a 60-day moratorium on new permits and that is something something a little bit different i would assume that the presidential order overrides the secretary of the interior's order but there may be clarification on that and so i don't think it's going to have a huge impact in the short run in the long run uh you know four or five years from now we don't know because we don't know what else is coming down the road here these are interesting times to say the least we've got a global pandemic climate change political change economic challenges can new mexico also handle trying to diversify its economy right now and move away from oil and gas dependence maybe and and if so why should the state be thinking about doing that well the state uh depends for 35 or 40 of its total revenue on oil and gas and that's that's just a terrible kind of situation to be in because oil and gas prices bounce around a lot and they have the legislature and other an executive branch people in santa fe have known this was a problem for about four decades and have not done much about it diversifying the economy is something that has often on been a strategy in new mexico for a long long time it hasn't occurred to the extent that a lot of people would like it's a we're not going to diversify in the short run we need to get off of oil and gas revenue and we need to do that now and the way to do that is changing the tax system i feel like whenever these conversations start happening about whether it's regulation on the oil and gas industry or you know this these federal pauses there's a lot of talk about um the obstacles for the oil and gas industry or obstacles for the state and diversifying the economy i'm curious though if you see opportunities in all of this happening the opportunities would be to work closely with the biden administration to [Music] guide future regulations on this um there you know the the delaware basin that portion of the permian that's in new mexico uh is the hottest shale play in the world and the oil companies are not going to abandon that it's a very complicated process we've got state land private land and federal land all mixed up together some people call it a checkerboard i'd call it a plate of spaghetti it's a it's a real mess and so the uh i'm the oil companies do face significant problems in getting permits uh not just to drill but for pipelines and the like uh new mexico has done pretty well uh on this uh new mexico oil production has just skyrocketed over the last 10 or 12 years uh in in 2008 new mexico produced 62 million barrels of oil uh about half of its previous peak last year uh well in 2019 we produced uh 330 million barrels the final figures for 2020 are not in yet but we will have exceeded that a little bit in 2020. the question is you know for opportunities there's still lots of oil in the ground there um and even from an environmental perspective you can't you can't shift from fossil fuels to wind and solar instantly uh a lot of that oil is going to come out of the ground and so there's still plenty of opportunity in new mexico for that the state land office is doing their best on state lands to try to diversify the mix of revenues they're putting their signing leases on wind and solar and the like uh but it's a it's a hard kind of thing so 20 or 30 or 50 years out given climate change um changes in can you know sort of consumer habits all these different things will the oil and gas industry still be um a robust industry a an industry that that that will boost the state's economy my best guess is that a generation from now uh it'll be a much smaller portion of the new mexico economy it'll be a much smaller portion of the energy mix the electric vehicle is coming it's some people would say it's here i think it's going to be five or ten years before there are enough evs on the road uh to make a dent in gasoline demand and certainly for a long time we're going to uh have uh a demand for jet fuel it's just hard to make a solar-powered airplane and i know people are experimenting especially in europe airbus is experimenting with possibly hydrogen cells for airplanes and a lot of things could happen but uh oil is going to be around for a while uh my guess is that uh either now or fairly soon we will we really will have reached the peak demand for oil all right well jim peach thank you so much for joining me i appreciate it you're quite welcome anytime laura this is a la nina year in recent storms notwithstanding that's usually not a good situation for new mexico snowpack is likely to be down meaning less water flowing this spring into reservoirs and fields that's on top of an average snow season last year when the rio grande dried for long stretches during the summer and even into the fall our laura paskus has been covering it as you know along with other journalists around the state already laura's reporting that irrigators below elephant butte are bracing for a quote zero allotment year and with that report in front of the interstate stream commission state water officials are recommending that farmers not plant crops this year unless they absolutely have to you may think that's not possible but yes you heard that right and tom even a couple years ago we had a healthy snowpack the river dried and it seems things are changing quickly are we prepared well uh you know you were talking a little bit about the farmers in the southern part of the state uh specifically south of elephant butte and uh you know there are those farmers who rely on you know surface water and then those who have access to well water and so those who have access to well water obviously will bear better but you know really it's it's it's going to be coming like a tiered approach like where are those priorities as far as is it going to be agriculture is it going to be economic development uh or somewhere in between and i've noticed that uh state engineer uh john d'antonio has not been very vocal lately uh but it's not his style i should say to really kind of start you know speaking on what he views as the priorities in these specific areas and i think that there will come a time whether it's the governor the state engineer or the legislature where you're going to need to be able to start picking or identifying anyway winners and losers in the in the water battle right uh and so and that can be done by identifying where those priorities are so if we pick up on that that's a big deal i mean you could see it coming where folks say look you can plant you can't you know i'm talking about the middle rio grande corridor not statewide now we're talking right now the river that's right and i think i just want to pick up on one thing i think it's important to note gene to your your your statement and it's true farmers are now being told if you can't if you can get away with not planting don't plant let your fields life fallow um and we tend to think of i think of farms as somewhat monolithic but there are a number of farms in new mexico that are not sort of day in day out this is how the farmers and their workers support themselves there are some farms where it's more of an option let's say to let the fields lie fallow and i think that that message is especially important to that group which to tom's point is probably less likely to have access to well water but um but we you know we're looking at what are our more once again what are our more water intensive crops what are our last water intensive props we know we've known for a long time that alfalfa for instance is just uh so water intensive sort of terrifying to think of giant alfalfa fields running in a year like this um the state is i mean it just you know water is a public resource as much as we tend to talk about water rights in particular you know particular the legal structure that gives particular farmers um access particular communities access we have known for a long time that um that this time was coming and i think that unfortunately as a community we have not fully addressed what is necessary in order to get through this ed pereira interestingly when i look at the activity in the roundhouse we got all kinds of bills on solar energy prescribed fire statewide greenhouse greenhouse gas reductions all kinds of bills but during the martinez administration there was almost no bills dropped because they knew if it got to her desk it was going nowhere have we put ourselves behind the eight ball here in a significant way because we haven't kept up with this over the past decade you know i think we have uh you know i think there are today thinkers and they're tomorrow thinkers in previous administration were today thinkers uh and right now we're trying to look at tomorrow and and we've missed a few years uh i think this is a crisis that you follow and you you believe the science there's some very clear empirical data that suggests that we we have a problem on our hands and it's not going to get better without uh some some aggressive steps and so we are a few steps behind again depending on where you stand on this some people will look at the rural ground with a couple of inches of water and they'll think that that that's fine and uh but if you're if you're a farmer as was mentioned um and we we have to rethink how we're using our water water is is a commodity and we need to really start to treat it that way i think maybe some have taken it for granted you turn on the faucet hey it opens up you get your glass of water you don't think much more about it but it's the bigger picture that we need to we need to really think about yeah hey tommy have you been down to the farm and ranch museum uh i think uh recently yeah last time i was there cruises last time i was there there was an interesting display about how native americans used tiny bits of water to you know grow lots and lots and lots of crops it was a really interesting display and i gotta wonder if we're facing a situation where we this is an innovation moment meaning we can really take a hard look about how we use water how we irrigate and really get it down to the gram of water you know and how we're using it is this is this what we're looking at here is this a possibility yeah oh absolutely and i you know i don't think that uh you can say that one size fits all you have to look at all specific options when you're looking at a situation as critical as water right um you know it's kind of interesting picking up on what sophie was saying about alfalfa is that you know up in santa fe right now uh one of the bills that most likely will get passed this session has to do with legalizing marijuana cannabis and cannabis and alfalfa actually have the same amount of water use in fact they're on that same type of crop rotation uh so it should be interesting to see that if all of a sudden cannabis is legalized in point here yeah the water use what is tha gonna that came up during when when the hemp was rising that came up everybody said well what about the water and everybody kind of turned their heads we're out of time this week thanks always to our panelists i'm back in a moment with a few final thoughts a lot of us have been out and about recently since it's been so unseasonably warm the heat hasn't been on for a number of days at casa de grant that's barely into february count me in with those concerned with what we are seeing with our own eyes right now it's too warm it's that simple now when new mexico officials advise our farmers not to bother planting as was the double take headline you heard earlier this week then i would say we have a problem climate change is no longer an abstract threat for new mexico that's why i was interested in the other headline this week that caught my eye that general motors plans to have its entire fleet of vehicles running on electric power by 2035. it's aggressive without question remains to be seen if the other auto manufacturers follow suit certainly but it is a significant step we are in a vulnerable position here in this state because of this area is ground zero for drought and i've already seen too many stories about so-called climate refugees leaving the area in anticipation of what's coming a presidential plan is all well and good we all have to do our part individually as well thanks again for joining and for staying informed and engaged we'll see you again next week in focus [Music] [Music] [Music] funding for new mexico infocus provided by the mccune charitable foundation and viewers like you