Early 2020 Endorsements for Environmental Champions
The Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club issued its early 2020 endorsements of incumbent legislators who are leading environmental champions. There are many legislators with excellent environmental voting records, however, this list is limited to those candidates who also were sponsors of the Sierra Club’s priority bills ...
NM community leaders applaud Oil Conservation Commission for adopting oil and gas enforcement rules
Community leaders across New Mexico applauded the Oil Conservation Commission for acting to protect the state’s air and water resources from oil and gas pollution by adopting new enforcement rules under legislation adopted in the 2019 session ...
Public Condemns Sale of Ancestral Tribal and Public Lands For Fracking
Tribal governments, as well as thousands of people and more than a dozen groups representing over five million members called on the Trump administration to cancel its plan to lease nearly 15,000 acres of ancestral tribal and federal public lands in New Mexico for fracking ...
Sierra Club response to Governor’s Climate Task Force Report
On November 21, 2019, the New Mexico Interagency Climate Change Task Force submitted a report to the governor, putting on full display our climate-conscious path forward as a state ...
New Mexico commits to climate action
On September 24, 2019, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that New Mexico will join 14 other states in adopting clean-car standards requiring new cars sold in the state to emit fewer greenhouse gases ...
Media Advisory: Climate Strike on Friday, September 20th
A youth-led walk-out from over 20 Albuquerque Schools will strike against a status quo of complacency, inaction and injustice on climate change, and join global voices to call for a livable future ...
New Mexico BLM Auctions Off More Public Land For Fracking
On September 5, 2019, environmental advocates gathered in front of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) State Office in Santa Fe to protest the agency’s September 5 online auction of nearly 3,000 acres of public land in the Permian Basin of New Mexico’s Greater Carlsbad region for industrialized fracking ...
Photo of methane flare in San Juan County courtesy of San Juan Citizens Alliance

Wheeler questions EPA’s authority to regulate methane, putting climate, families at risk

For Immediate Release: August 29, 2019. Contact: Camilla Feibelman, camilla.feibelman@sierraclub.org, (505) 715-8388

Today, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler proposed to eliminate direct regulation of methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas, from the EPA’s New Source Performance Standards. In New Mexico, this would mean that 4,700 new and existing wells would no longer have to reduce their methane emissions, endangering our climate and our families’ health. 

Methane is 80 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, but it disappears from the atmosphere much faster, giving us one of the best chances we have of fighting to save our children and grandchildren from the worst consequences of the ...