Diverse Local Groups Call for Clean Energy Jobs and Legislation, Deliver Petitions to Udall, Bingaman

Above: U.S. Senate staff receive petitions from New Mexicans urging passage of bold, comprehensive clean energy jobs and climate legislation. L-to-R: Patricia Dominguez, Field Representative, Office of Sen. Jeff Bingaman; Bianca Ortiz-Wertheim, State Director, Office of Senator Tom Udall; Akilah Sanders-Reed, Regional Coordinator of the 1Sky campaign.

On Thursday, local youth with the 1 Sky campaign organized a press conference and panel in order to demonstrate broad public support for the clean energy economy. Speakers from local clean energy, business and grassroots environmental organizations joined prominent youth advocates in highlighting the growth in New Mexico’s clean energy economy.

Operation Free, a coalition of veterans and national security groups, provided a statement explaining their mission to secure America with clean energy.

“I see hasty decisions, I see economic decline, I see companies buying the future -- my future -- and I see the horrible effects of our addiction on oil spreading across the Gulf of Mexico,” said 16-year old Akilah Sanders-Reed, the event organizer and the Regional Coordinator for the 1 Sky campaign. “I don’t want that. I want to be able to live my life on a planet where decisions are based on good, not gold; where our economy thrives on sustainable practices, rather than wasteful infinite growth for temporary profit; where the lives of people are more important than the lives of corporate names; and where I can feel safe from the catastrophic consequences of our dependence on oil.”

1 Sky and the Clean Energy Works Coalition also presented members of the staff from the offices of Senator Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman with more than 2,500 petitions from New Mexicans urging passage this year of bold, comprehensive legislation that advances clean energy and protects the climate.

“In the wake of the most exceedingly bad ecological calamity in U.S. history, Americans need thorough activity on clean vitality and atmosphere to decrease contamination, improve our national security, and put our nation responsible for its vitality future,” said Sanders Moore, Advocate with Environment New Mexico. Moore likewise talked in the interest of the Clean Energy Works coalition in New Mexico, a different coalition focused on passing far reaching atmosphere and clean vitality enactment at the government level.

A September 2008 investigation anticipated a $100 billion open speculation program will make two million green occupations in only two years, and that putting resources into clean vitality creates four fold the number of employments as putting resources into the oil business; the examination was finished by the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Political Economy Research Institute. What's more, 71 percent of voters in a Pew Environmental Group overview expressed that government interests in sustainable power source and vitality proficiency will make a huge number of occupations.

"Consistently that we postpone section of extensive clean vitality and environmental change enactment, we send another $1 billion to antagonistic and unsteady nations that don't have America's best enthusiasm on a basic level," said veteran Chuck Tyler, NM State Director with Operation Free. "Our reliance on petroleum products makes America less secure, and we look to our Senate administration to lead by and by in securing America with clean vitality."

Following the board, a short motion picture cut by nearby maker Kevin Hansen about environmental change here in New Mexico, including interviews from Albuquerque natives, was debuted:

"We deserve it, and to the future, to change to clean vitality," said Akilah Sanders-Reed. "We have the ability to wind up noticeably economical, and convey a huge number of occupations appropriate to our group. By putting resources into green employments and a green economy, we can diminish our reliance on outside oil, enable the earth, to top environmental change, and turn into the prosperous state and country I know we can be."

Look at the Clean Energy Works New Mexico page on Facebook.

Photo Credit: Shrayas Jatkar