Solar-Sweetie-Solar

My new chant. It’s no accident if you hear an echo of the rant, “Drill Baby Drill” from the presidential campaign of 2008 and ever since in certain unmentionable circles. Here’s the genesis.


You might have been following the weather around the country last week. If you did, Chicago and the Mid-west dominated the news with Dallas and Oklahoma a close behind. For some: snow, thunderstorms, sleet, the dreaded “winter mix” paralyzed much of the Mid-west and Northeast.

Here in New Mexico and neighboring west Texas, we had a realllllly cold snap. Actually this was the second cold spell this year for us here in our little pocket of NM. But this last week, we hit -8 in town one night and about -1 the next, with daytime highs in the teens and 20’s. Now that actually isn’t *that* bad, certainly not compared to the northern tier of the country. But here, people who’ve lived here 15 and 30 and 75 years say they don’t remember when it was that cold before. And it only lasted 3 days. But that was enough. As a result…

We had a little gas problem. The problem was no gas. Texas used it all up! Well, that’s only slightly an exaggeration as you’ll see if you read the Silver City SunNews Story. Or you can read any one of dozens of stories listed on Google from papers all over the country. We even made the Huffington Post and some forum called survivalistboards.com. Anyway, I’m getting distracted.

This house is on natural gas for heat and cooking plus hot water heaters. So we woke Thursday morning to a cold house that got colder as the day went on. Mid afternoon, I went into the garage to look for another space heater (we did have electricity, so the little heaters were pressed into use). I found that a water pipe in the wall between the garage and a bedroom had burst and water was pouring out of the wall and flooding across the garage floor. So as of 4 pm on Thursday we not only had no heat, we had no water. What we did have was lots of company. At least 300 homes in Silver had no gas and an untold number were drowning in water flowing from frozen-and-burst pipes. State-wide, the number of gas-less homes was something around 30,000 based on one of the articles I read. On Friday morning a plumber showed up, sent by the owner of this property and by noon, the gas co guys had come by, turned on the gas meter and relit everything. By 3 pm, heat and hot water. Not a big deal, really. A little uncomfortable. Think of it as camping-under-roof for a little over 24 hours in less than ideal weather.

So why the rant…er…new chant? We have a new Governor. She’s a republican; not a bad thing in itself. Her election was funded in significant part by oil-and-gas interests, especially from Texas. Industrialists poured BIG money into NM to get Suzanna Martinez elected. Ok, well, we’ve got her, for better or worse. So now she’s nominating her cabinet. That’s what politicians do. And of course they usually nominate people who think like them, support them, share history, ideals, vision, whatever – that’s also what they do, dems, republicans, independents, teaparty-ers, all. So Ms. Martinez nominated a guy named Harrison Schmitt – he’s a native of Silver City, a geologist by ph.d and an astronaut who walked on the moon, no less. Nominated him to be the head of NM Department of Energy, Mineral and Natural Resources.

Here’s the problem. Mr. Harrison Schmitt, astronaut and scientist, believes that climate change is a governmental conspiracy to gain control of people’s lives, dollars and decisions. Here’s an actual quote:

Schmitt believes that mainstream climate science is a conspiracy “to increase government control,” as he wrote in his resignation from the Planetary Society in 2008:


“Consensus”, as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science. You know as well as I, the “global warming scare” is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/01/10/martinez-schmitt-deniers/

In addition, he doesn’t have a very high opinion of environmentalists:

While appearing on radio host Alex Jones’ show in 2009, Harrison Schmitt said that leaders of the environmental movement are communists. By Matthew Reichbach
01.06.11 1:18 pm, The New Mexico Independent.

Mmmm. Does that sound like the kind of person I want as the head of NM’s energy and natural resources department? Do I want him creating and pushing policy on drilling and producing natural gas and oil? Do I think he’ll support NM’s nascent solar and other renewable energy businesses? Nobetcha (pardon the Palinesque). I could go on. But I won’t. Bottom line: I’m afraid that Ms. Martinez and Mr. Schmitt if he is confirmed will take advantage of NM Gas Co’s failure to deliver gas to NM homes, schools and businesses, using this as leverage to push for more drilling and production of gas and oil, and to push a roll back of environmental and natural resource protections. In fact, Ms. Martinez has already started working on the latter. She wants to make things “business friendly,” she says. Why not solar? Wind? There’s no money there. Note to Mr. Obama: If you want to be 80% renewable energy reliant by 2035, y’all had better start putting some $$ there, to convince the oily guys that going green pays. Note to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chair of US Senate Energy Committee: while you’re visiting the White House to plan renewable energy efforts for the rest of this president’s term, you want to pay attention to what’s going down here at home; the irony isn’t lost.

So I wrote my first-ever-in-my-life-political letters. There’s a chance that the state Senate Rules Committee might not pass this Schmitt guy onto the floor for a vote. I wrote every one of those Rules Committee members. I wrote my own state Senator. And I wrote Sen. Bingaman.

My message: Solar-Sweetie-Solar!

Feel free to take up the chant. Solar is good where-ever you are! And remember, if you hear Solar-Sweetie-Solar chanted at a political convention near you, you heard it here first.