Can the sun solve New Mexico's energy conundrum? [View all]

The blue van turned onto the pitted road, and for miles the tallest objects on the horizon were the brush and yucca. Soon, signs appeared with arrows that pointed to dirt trails with curious names like “Illinois Camp Booster.” Suddenly, what looked like a hidden city appeared and the landscape was filled with warehouses, tall cylindrical gas storage tanks and, as far as the eye could see, rusted, bobbing oil pump jacks.

Inside the van were three members of Citizens Caring for the Future (CCFF), practically the lone organized resistance to the oil and gas industry in Southeastern New Mexico. They were an odd bunch. At the wheel was Nick King, a Mennonite pastor and owner of a small solar company. Behind him was Joan Brown, a Catholic Franciscan nun with a grandmother’s delicate voice. And aiming a camera out the passenger window was Nathalie Eddy, a field organizer with Earthworks, a national environmental nonprofit, who’d driven from Colorado for the day’s excursion.

“This is what it’s like, 24/7,” Eddy said, pointing at the busy landscape, the trucks entering and leaving and the arms of the pumpjacks rotating.

The Permian Basin stretches from Carlsbad, New Mexico, 30 miles across the Texas border. It is 75,000 square miles of metal and tubes and spire-like pipes burning gas, all above jackrabbit scrubland. Depending on your feelings about the industry, the Permian Basin is either awe-striking or nauseating.

Read more: https://www.hcn.org/articles/renewable-energy-can-the-sun-solve-new-mexicos-energy-conundrum
(High Country News)