Demonstrators gather outside the Clyde Hotel on Sept. 14, 2023 as part of the Climate Strike organized by the Youth United for Climate Crisis Action. YUCCA and other New Mexico environment and conservation organizations said they would continue efforts to lower emissions which fuel climate disasters. (Photo by Anna Padilla for Source New Mexico)
New Mexico climate groups struck a defiant tone in the wake of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to dismantle federal authority to reduce one of the drivers of climate change: greenhouse gases.
On Tuesday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced in Indianapolis that the agency would scrap what’s called the “endangerment finding” established in 2009 under the Obama Administration. In that finding, the agency determined climate change was a threat to human health, which allowed the EPA the power to regulate greenhouse gases.
After the proposal is published, the EPA will solicit public comment over the next 45 days and finalize the rule, most likely within the next year.
The 2009 finding formed the basis for a number of ensuing EPA regulations, including a 2024 rule requiring increasingly strict tailpipe emissions standards for cars and trucks. In his announcement this week, Zeldin contended the framework established in 2009 hurt the wider economy.
“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers,” Zeldin said in a written statement, claiming that under the Obama and Joe Biden administrations, the EPA “twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”
Trump’s EPA proposes rollback of basis for climate change rules, sparking Dem outrage
New Mexico’s top environmental official said the Trump administration’s proposal “ignores decades of established climate science,” and threatens New Mexicans’ health and economy.
“Clean energy means good jobs — thousands of them already here in New Mexico, with more on the way,” Environment Secretary James Kenney said in a statement provided to Source NM. “We’ll continue working with lawmakers to ensure New Mexico has the tools we need to keep reducing emissions and growing our clean energy economy, regardless of what happens in Washington. New Mexico will continue standing behind the science and leading on climate action because it protects our families, our economy, and our future.”
In recent years, New Mexico has adopted laws and rules to lower state emissions, including the 2019 Energy Transition Act requiring more renewable energy for electricity generation, and a 2022 law requiring oil and gas producers to lower methane emissions.
New Mexico adopted rules from California to phase-out gas-powered cars and ramp up sales of electric vehicles available for purchase starting in 2026. President Donald Trump blocked the rule in June, prompting a lawsuit from New Mexico and 10 other states that enforce California’s emissions rules.The state is also moving forward in September with rule-making to reduce pollution over time from “cleaner fuels,” following the adoption of the law in 2024.
Currently, the state government is acting under Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s 2019 executive order setting reduced emission goals through 2050. Several lawmakers have introduced measures to enshrine these goals into state law, which have thus far stalled out at the Roundhouse.
‘We’re going to need to see action’
New Mexico conservation and environmental groups said the decision, which is not yet final, will roll back progress on clean energy and worsen risk from disasters linked to climate change, and said local governments have to work to fill the gaps.
“The idea that we are turning back 16 years of progress and turning our backs on the detrimental effects of climate change on human existence is heartbreaking,” Carlos Matutes, executive director of GreenLatinos, told Source NM. “We know full well that climate change is impacting the lives of New Mexicans, look no further than the Rio Grande running dry while we have floods in the Southeastern part of the state.”
While New Mexico’s regulations can still continue, the federal government’s move will have a “ripple effect” throughout climate policy, said Kyle Tisdel, an attorney and the Climate & Energy program director at the Western Environmental Law Center.
“This is an abandonment of EPA’s fundamental duty to put the U.S. in the lead in terms of our emissions and our economy going forward, but also to put people first before the oil and gas industry and before the coal industry,” Tisdel told Source NM. “It’s this abdication of the federal government’s fundamental role to do what’s in the best interests of the public.”
The policy will likely be challenged in the courts, said Conservation Voters New Mexico Climate and Energy Advocate Justin Garoutte.
“The Trump EPA’s plan makes blatant climate denial official U.S. policy,” Garoutte said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: eliminating the endangerment finding and methane regulation is a Polluters’ First agenda, allowing the industries responsible for more than 50% of climate pollution in the country to evade regulation.”
The EPA decision to scrap endangerment is “a direct attack” on the health and futures for young people, said Zoey Craft Communications Manager Youth United for Climate Crisis Action.
“The endangerment finding is really one of the few protections that at the federal level acknowledges how harmful these emissions actually are to our health and our futures,” Craft told Source NM. “Rolling it back doesn’t just weaken policy, it ultimately is giving polluters more power, and our communities simultaneously less protection.”
Craft said focus will have to include local responses to extreme-weather disasters.
“When our government won’t step up to protect us, we’re going to have to continue to step up to keep protecting each other,” Craft said.
New Mexicans can participate in local rulemaking hearings and upcoming legislative sessions to put more urgency into reducing emissions, said Nini Gu, the Environmental Defense Fund’s western regulatory and legislative manager.
“New Mexicans should tell their policy makers very clearly how they have been impacted by climate pollution, oil and gas emission and that they are really looking to their governor and state regulators to step in and fill that void left by the federal government,” Gu told Source NM. “The state does not, and should not, wait for a mandate from the federal government in order to step in and protect New Mexicans.”
The decision should spur further action in the governor’s last 30-day session in 2026, said Camilla Feibelman, the director of the Rio Grande Chapter of Sierra Club.
“We are going to need to see action in this coming legislative session, this last 30-day session with this governor, real action, because we’re being left so exposed by the federal government,” Feibelman told Source NM.
Feibelman noted that New Mexico has worked to implement its own methane rules and car emission even as the second-largest producer of oil and gas and that New Mexico has to “be a leader on climate.”
“People need to remember that we have the power to change things,” she said. “We have the power to change things at home by picking better products and by picking better candidates, who are willing to act on climate.”
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