Catch up on all the episodes of Breaking the Cycle.
More about our guests
- Angelica Rubio
- James Hiatt Twitter
- LA Bucket Brigade/a>
- News Article: Activists push against LNG plants, want renewable energy in southwest Louisiana
Transcript
(Intro Music)
Courtney Naquin: How’s it going, y’all? Welcome back to Breaking the Cycle, a podcast about how communities as far as the Permian Basin to southeast Louisiana are fighting against the impacts of polluting industry. I’m your host, Courtney Naquin, recording in Bulbancha, also known as New Orleans, on the ancestral lands of the Houma, Chitimacha, Choctaw, Ishak, and Biloxi People.
On today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the super sexy subject of economic diversification. And up top, maybe it’s not the most exciting sounding topic, but it’s important. And rather than trying to describe what that means, I want to ask you all first a question, a small thought exercise I’d like to pose. Think about when you were growing up. What did people in your area do for a living? What did your parents do? And what do you do now? Do you still live in the same community that you grew up in? Or did you have to leave to pursue your career? What do the people around you do now? And how many options do you think people have? If you wanted to do something else entirely than you’re doing today, how easy would that be? What are the barriers? What does a safe job feel like in your area, both in terms of financial security and physical safety? Can you have both? I’ll go first.
As I was growing up in southeast Texas, right on the border of Texas and Louisiana on the Texas side, it didn’t take long for me to realize that there weren’t that many economic choices for people. The Golden Triangle, made up of the cities of Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, and the surrounding tiny towns, is fairly small and pretty rural. My family works in the rubber lining industry. It’s a niche petrochemical industry service job that can be very labor intensive and pretty dangerous. Eventually, I moved to Austin for school and got a desk job, mostly safe from chemicals and explosions. This area of the country is small, and maybe easy to miss. But it’s responsible for a significant chunk of the country’s energy and plastic production today, and is also a major milestone in the history of the U.S.'s oil and gas driven economy.
Now, oil production often comes from the Permian Basin and then is processed at petrochemical or oil and gas refineries in southeast Texas and southeast Louisiana. But these regions are now facing a massive fracked gas export boom that’s unlike any other boom these states have seen in the last several decades, except for the fracking boom in the Permian Basin. These things, of course, are very much related.
But if you don’t have dreams of being in this industry, it’s hard to stick around and find something that’s safe and high paying. Personally, I feel like our imaginations for the future have become increasingly limited to polluting industry. It’s not easy to think of our lives outside of the oil and gas or petrochemical industry because, honestly, it’s scary. How can we imagine a different future when the infrastructure and support for it doesn’t really exist? When we have few to no examples of a just transition that we can rely on. If you talk to people in the area, for example, if I were to go to my own parents or family, about thinking about new possibilities, people find it offensive. People find it scary. People don’t really want to talk about it all the time.
Our oil and gas relationship is parasitic. It feels like we need them but we don’t. But how do we get that conversation going? How do we get people to have faith and excitement in new possibilities and give people the space to dare to imagine something different, especially in places that honestly feel so forgotten and taken for granted, or even seen as a lost cause? So, for this episode, I’m talking with Angelica Rubio, a legislator serving in the New Mexico House of Representatives, who advocates for a just transition from oil and gas in her state, and James Hiatt, a former refinery worker and now environmental advocate in southwest Louisiana with the organization Louisiana Bucket Brigade, to help us grow our imagination for what’s possible.
First, just a little bit about yourself. Angelica, you’re an organizer and state representative and have led conversations in New Mexico about the budget and the State’s over-reliance on oil and gas revenues. So what brought you to this work?
Angelica Rubio: Yeah, thank you. So, I came to this work mostly because, as an organizer, I grew up in rural New Mexico in the Permian Basin where so much of the extraction occurs in New Mexico. The majority of my family is either directly or indirectly impacted by that effort. And so, for me, I’ve always believed that we should move towards a restorative economy, one that provides reparations to the folks who have been impacted the most, frontline communities at the epicenter of this extraction. So, when I moved back to New Mexico in 2010, I decided that I wanted to focus on rural organizing and then eventually came to live in the second largest city in the state, which is in southern New Mexico, which is Las Cruces, a very urban rural area. Through the organizing I was doing with workers and folks who were also being impacted by the collateral damage that a lot of these extractive industries create, I was asked several times to run for this open seat and I did so back in 2016. I’ve been serving in the legislature for the last six years. The priorities that I have set forth are around what does diversification around moving away from oil and gas look like for New Mexico. And that if we actually planned ahead long term and made this a multigenerational plan, it wouldn’t be that hard to do. But we have a lot of opposition to this idea, including Democrats who are too afraid of the consequences that that might bring. So, my role in the legislature is to make our leaders uncomfortable in the sense that we need to prioritize workers and frontline communities when we’re thinking about not just climate issues but how we need to transition away from this industry.
Courtney Naquin: So, James, I want to ask you a similar question. I know you really well at this point since we work closely together. So, I know that you’re an organizer in southwest Louisiana leading conversations about transitioning away from a dependence on oil and gas. Part of your scope of work is fighting new polluting infrastructure and another part is thinking about the next phase of economic development for southwest Louisiana. How did you get to this place? Your involvement, can you also talk about your involvement in your faith community and how that might intersect with your environmental work.
James Hiatt: Thank you. I am in southwest Louisiana and I was born and raised here. We had moved away for a little bit, me and my wife moved up to New York City, and I had very little intention of ever working in a refinery. We ended up moving back to Lake Charles after we had my son. You know, I ended up working in a refinery. I was a refiner, operator, and lab analyst for about a decade. So I feel for the people who do this work, who still drive cars that need gasoline. But for me, it was not fulfilling, I did not feel that I was living into my full purpose. So I went back to school, that’s how I got away from oil and gas and tried to transition to something new. At my church, we have a little private Facebook group where people share information and talk about the community. Somebody shared this link for the Louisiana Bucket Brigade organizing job and the only organizing I've ever done is around Bible study and getting people to band practice, you know. So I didn’t know if I was quite the right fit, but my background, and just living here and loving this area seemed to work out well. So, that’s how I came to this work.
Part of the thing in southwest Louisiana is, we already have three large gas export terminals that have led the country into becoming the leader in LNG export in the world. There’s seven facilities throughout the United States and three of them are in my backyard in southwest Louisiana. And they have proposed another seven different terminals here. The only thing that any local person hears is that it’s going to bring jobs. What they don't hear about is how it's eroding the coast, how it’s contributing to greenhouse gasses that are causing these storms. In 2020, we suffered two major hurricanes back to back within six weeks of each other, followed by a spring that had Winter Storm Uri, followed by a random Monday in May where it completely flooded. The mayor called it a thousand year flood. So, we live in a place that is highly susceptible to climate change, we get to feel the impacts of climate change. At the same time, we are being asked to continue to contribute in such a major way to the exact thing that is causing climate change. And the truth is there’s already opportunities already here that would provide jobs, good paying jobs. But we’re being stymied at every turn by oil and gas executives and their lobbyists.
Courtney Naquin: Thank you, thank you both. It feels like these places are so isolated but, really, these are one and the same fight essentially. How can people in New Mexico and folks in southwest Louisiana, is there a collective strategy that can mutually benefit each other?
Angelica Rubio: It is a global issue and one of the things that we try to demonstrate particularly in the legislature, especially when we hear so much opposition, is that I want New Mexico to be a beacon for other places, not just in this country but also around the world. Even though we’re just such a small state, we have the potential to actually prove to the world that we can combat climate change.
James Hiatt: Yeah, I think also, just to connect these two, I mean, Louisiana and New Mexico in many ways are very similar and the ranking of states in education and industry. We’re always at the lower end, and the truth is, we have industry that has money, that has been making money on the backs of the people. They own the agencies and the state houses in many cases to where they get out of paying the taxes that would be beneficial for our children and to allow us to climb out of these holes that we find ourselves in.
Courtney Naquin: Thank you both. I would like to ask both of you a bit about your states’ complicated relationship with oil and gas revenues and the narrative that this industry is an inherent economic good even though the reality usually paints a different picture. If the state, if New Mexico did get rid of oil and gas as a major economic source, how would it fund education?
Angelica Rubio: I appreciate that question and I will say that here in New Mexico we work to reframe it in the sense that it’s no longer a complicated relationship, it’s straight up an abusive relationship. The oil and gas industry does provide a significant chunk of revenues to the state, but that’s where the abuse comes in because it provides just enough for us to, like, survive, but it also deepens our, the sense of scarcity. People operate from this sense of scarcity all the time when it comes to the budget, where we should put the money. I mean, the fact that the goals of the legislative finance committee and the chairs who chair those committees, that they want to put such a significant amount of revenues in savings, in like the permanent fund, because they know that we’re going to have a bust in the future. So the rationale behind that whole mentality is just, it’s mind blowing that we are saving this money for future years when we know that oil and gas revenues are going to drastically decrease. So, we have to develop a multigenerational road map. We are not going to be able to get rid of oil and gas tomorrow, and this is where I also challenge the climate and environmental spaces.
We cannot end the industry tomorrow, this has to be a long term plan that needs to be implemented. I mean, the state was flourishing well before oil and gas became a thing here in the state of New Mexico. We have Indigenous and Native communities that were thriving in their own communities. Local communities all around the state were making things work, and we’re not even bringing in frontline communities to share their own ideas. I feel like we need to live into this idea of abundance, which I believe we have in the state of New Mexico, that we do have an abundance of ideas. We do have an abundance of opportunity, and that, we’re not really living into that and it's based off of fear and based off of scarcity. I hope that with the growing number of minority folks like myself in the legislature, you need to elect more of us so that we can be more intentional about how we build this multigenerational roadmap moving forward.
Courtney Naquin: Yeah, thank you. Um, I have a follow up question, but first I want to pose the same question to James.
James Hiatt: Angelica, I resonate so much with what you said about coming from a place of abundance and not speaking from fear and scarcity which is the model that we traditionally have been working from here in Louisiana. Lake Charles was around before we had industry, before we had all this oil and gas, and then gas export terminals. People were living in Lake Charles and enjoying the natural environment, enjoying the outdoors, enjoying the lake. What we’ve seen is that, as the war began in the 1940s, we started building these refineries. Industry’s tentacles have spread throughout and they de-incentivize any possible change off the sauce, in whatever capacity that is. Cold turkey is probably not going to work. All of our cars are still running on gas. We can begin all of this, the way you framed it, a restorative economy, that’s what we need, a way. Homemaking and healing can be coming through in economic ways that make good paying jobs that aren’t just pipe dreams. We have the ability to build solar farms and put solar on people’s houses in a significant way that would provide, not only for the installers, but for the homeowners, a way that they don’t have to be so reliant on this fossil fuel, but we have to incentivize these programs. The government has to allow opportunities to exist for people to do that and not just continue doubling down on fossil fuel. So what we have is, we give tax abatements, huge billion dollar tax abatements, to these companies over ten years and that frees them up to do PR stunts where they’ll put out, you know, $20,000 here, $20,000 there, get their names on a school or a library. Meanwhile, if they would just pay their share of taxes, they would fund the libraries, fund the roads, fund the teachers, I mean, on and on. We have, or, politicians and those in power have consistently sided with industry. That has allowed almost a beggar’s mentality from the people. The power should be in the hands of the people. These companies should be, if they want to be active in the community, they could be active in a way on the front end and not come in like they’re some kind of savior at the end. I hope you can edit that down pretty good.
Courtney Naquin: No worries. But I do want to ask a followup question to you, which is, since we’re talking about schools and how they’re really underfunded, can you actually talk a bit about how school boards are connected to tax abatements and the leadership in those, in the school boards, and how they’re connected to industry.
James Hiatt: Just recently with the election of our Democratic Governor Jon Bel Edwards, he moved this Industrial Tax Exemption Program was basically a one board, closed door thing that happened in Baton Rouge. He has put that back into the hands of the parishes, in front of the parish councils, the police juries, and the school boards. So, now in order to get the Industrial Tax Exemption, these billion dollar tax abatements, the companies have to present in front of school boards and in front of local parishes. That recently was, did not get codified into our constitution, so the next governor could take it back and make it back into a closed room, a back room deal back in Baton Rouge. But our local school board was afraid of losing the potential of one of these plants here, because they could’ve went somewhere else. But the truth is, they’re not going anywhere else, they want to come right here because we have this river and this infrastructure already in place. They voted for 100% tax exemption for ten years on property taxes, which amounts to 2.2 billion just on one of these gas export terminals. I can’t begin to tell you what 2.2 billion would do for the school board, for our teachers, for the drainage that has issues, for the roadways. We have all these industries here, but we have a teacher shortage because people make more money doing something else. It’s hard to find certified teachers if you’re paying them not even close to a regional average. I don’t know if that answers your question, Courtney.
Courtney Naquin: No, it does, it does.
James Hiatt: I’m getting in the weeds, no problem.
Courtney Naquin: No, that’s what I wanted. I wanted the weeds. I want to ask Angelica first a followup question related to what you said about multigenerational solutions, if I may. So, can you just build on this idea of a multigenerational solutions, and how do we start that process?
Angelica Rubio: I think here in New Mexico we’ve already begun that and part of that is through community organizing that’s been happening for a very long time. I mean, we recently just passed a paid sick leave which came into play on Friday. So there’s pieces of policy like that that are part of the building of a movement that’s taking shape all across this state. I think this is where it’s important to illustrate the fact that we are not going to be able to solve everything through the ballot box. It has to be done through organizing, organizing and building relationships with folks within our communities and centering them and the efforts that are happening on the ground for them. I say that because there is some intentionality around developing economic development opportunities. But they’re so, it’s focusing on things like the space port for example, like sending white men to space. For me, I have a problem with that when we have, our educational system is ranked at the bottom of so many lists. Our quality of life is ranked at the bottom of so many lists. I feel like we’re grasping for things to work when the knowledge and wisdom within our communities exists that can really provide that roadmap. I don’t think that we are centering on those stories as much as we should, at least from a policy perspective, whereas there’s organizations on the ground who are talking with folks in frontline communities who do have imagination around what economies in their communities could look like. There’s other things that we can do within our state that have so much potential if we just focused on our organizing and building relationships with people on the ground who can actually tell us what they actually need.
James Hiatt: I think this idea of sending a bunch of white men into space might be a solution, I don’t know [laughs].
Courtney Naquin: [laughs]
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Courtney Naquin: As you guys have both pointed out, there are a lot of jobs in oil and gas in each of your regions. In southeast New Mexico, there are lots of jobs in drilling and transporting oil and gas. And then, in Lake Charles, it’s all about refining, and processing, and exporting. And the narrative is that these jobs are what sustain families and local and state economies. You’ve touched on this already, but I would just like to get into it a little bit deeper into it. What is the reality? What do people’s lives actually look like? So, either one of you, maybe Angelica?
Angelica Rubio: It’s a mix. There are folks who do have jobs that are consistent, and they’ve had these jobs for several years now. My family falls in, for example, they’re either directly employed by the companies themselves or they have a business that provides for the industry. But there’s also a number of jobs that actually don’t go to our local communities. You have folks that are coming from places like Louisiana, and Arkansas, and other places. I mean, I heard this really heart wrenching story a couple of weeks ago about how a gentleman who is from the community that I grew up in, had bed bugs in the temporary housing that they stay in when they have to go out there periodically, because you have all these other men who are coming from other states. It’s just a really bad situation. So, it’s a mix of different people who are coming in and out of these jobs. I think this sort of like how the communities are being impacted because they think that they are benefitting from these spaces. Like, back home, the students that graduate from my high school actually get scholarships by these companies. That cloth right there, that immediate giving that these companies are giving, it’s not allowing people to really understand the systemic problems that these companies are actually creating because they’re blinded by a lot of these other things that are being handed to them. I think that goes back to that scarcity piece. So, I think when people feel like we’re attacking the oil and gas industry, they’re taking it personally because they do believe that if it’s not just their job, it is a job that someone will lose. I feel like it’s tiers of systemic issues that a lot of folks are bearing witness to. Not everybody has a job, but somehow they’re being impacted by the industry, both positively and negatively.
Courtney Naquin: Yeah, thank you. Just a quick note, I relate a lot to what you said just because my family, I was born and raised in southeast Texas but most of my family is from southeast Louisiana. So much of my family work in oil and gas or like adjacent to it, and also to petrochem. For example, my dad and my brother are rubber liners, which is a very niche role in petrochem where they have to line the inside of these big rail cars that carry toxic chemicals. But my brother is a burn victim from it. He had a really severe injury and it was very scary. We weren’t really sure if he was going to make it. But he still works in it, he still works as a rubber liner because that’s just the trade that he knows. It’s not that he isn’t skilled, but like that’s just, it’s not so easy to transition whenever the options really aren’t there. Also, the other thing that you said that was very relatable is about the scholarships, which is that there were so many, especially southeast Texas. Petrochem and oil and gas do offer a whole lot of scholarship opportunities to kids in the area. But usually, I wouldn’t say there’s always the requirement, but usually the encouragement, and just like many of the procedural steps of being in the local university there with this scholarship is to continue working in oil and gas. You get the scholarship from oil and gas, or petrochem, and you’re very likely to become some sort of engineer or working in one of these plants. It seems very generous, and I suppose it is for people who are low income or first generation. But, it still feels like a limiting option can continuously put people in these jobs that are not always great for their health and the local economy, so yeah. I hear everything you say.
Angelica Rubio: Wow. And just to add to what you mentioned about your brother, and I’m really sorry that that happened, is that there’s also a lot of pride in this work. I think that’s another thing that folks, especially in green spaces, don’t recognize is that people are proud to work in these jobs, and so we can’t just say, oh we’re just going to create a new industry and we might be able to train you. No, it’s like you say, it is a niche, all of the expertise, and we have to be very intentional about how we talk about this transition because we can’t leave these individuals behind.
Courtney Naquin: Definitely. James, I would like to pass the mic to you to just talk a bit also about what the reality of the jobs are like in southwest Louisiana. Who do the jobs go to? How impactful are they really? And what are the tradeoffs?
James Hiatt: Yeah, thank you. One of the justifications I came with to myself and to others is that we were fueling America. You know, I pushed a button that sent gasoline or diesel to jet down a pipeline to the rest of the country. Literally, I was responsible for about five percent of the nation’s oil and gas, and that was a justification for me. Because it’s true, what we’ve seen is that people are, one generation was retiring, and a new generation was coming in. So each of these refineries that we have had less than a thousand or less than eight hundred people, permanent jobs in this spot. Now, the residual, the contract workers and the welders, there’s a little bit more of that seasonal, that’s the jobs that don’t go to locals, right? For these gas export terminals, they’re promising thousands of jobs. The truth is that it’s only about two hundred permanent jobs after it is built. There will be thousands of pipefitter and construction jobs, and those jobs will not go to locals because we do not have six thousand pipefitters not working, just sitting around waiting on the next job, right? So they end up going to people in Oklahoma and Wyoming and wherever else they can pull in workers from.
My dad retired from a refinery. My brother-in-law still works for one. But my mom is from Kentucky, and I have seen the effects of the extractive industry after it gets done with you. I think you can ask anyone in the Rust Belt, you can ask anyone in coal country what happens when they’re done. They get up and leave and they leave their mess. You have workers who are, like you say, who are niche workers, coal miners can’t find jobs. We are in a similar situation where we could, I’m not saying this is going to happen tomorrow, like you said it's a multigenerational problem and we need to fix it in this way. If we do not begin to move in a way that is different from what we’ve known, about oil and gas and being so dependent on it, what will happen when we do end up shifting, when these jobs do go away?
What is crazy to me is that we have continually heard about all of the above energy policies so many times. All of the above, what that means is more of the same energy policy. There’s really no significant investment in something other than what we’ve already been doing. So, all of the above to me would mean let’s do the thing that is maybe scary, because we haven't done it before. But, let’s put solar and wind and storage technology to use. Put efficiency measures into building codes and to helping to move us away from so much dependency on oil and gas.
Courtney Naquin: Thank you, thank you both. From an outsider’s perspective just listening to both of you, it’s clear that industry is as much as, it’s easy to be an echo chamber maybe in these areas. If you live in southwest Louisiana or New Mexico, it’s easy to think, of course this is the only thing that makes sense. But whenever you step back and you analyze it and you see what people actually go through, the picture changes quite a bit. So, I’d like to just ask more about what the traditional economies have been in your regions. What other sort of jobs do you think would return or flourish alongside energy jobs?
Angelica Rubio: Yeah, I mean, that's a really important question and is part of the conversation I've been having with folks for the last few years. I think the challenge is that oil and gas and our reliance on it has made it hard for people to actually reimagine something different. For me, I feel like it’s easy because I understand our history and I embrace the learning of what colonization has done to the state of New Mexico particularly. I think when I’m involved in those conversations with people who represent Indigenous communities or those who have lived here for generations, they can think of times back then where they didn’t need a whole lot. I think this is where we can go into this whole rabbit hole around what capitalism has done to not only our state but also the world in that we can’t think of any other possibility, other than we need to be able to make money to survive.
At the end of the day, oil and gas, as much of the revenues that they provide for our state, they aren’t actually doing anything for our state. And so, part of the organizing that I’ve been doing and that needs to continue to happen is how are we providing folks opportunities to share their thoughts around not only a historical context of how we got here, but also providing opportunities for them to really think through what a new economy could be. I remember going to Deming a couple years ago, and I was riding around with a bunch of ranchers who wanted to build the border wall. If you know me, I am very anti-border wall. I also ride bikes. I love to mountain bike. I love to be on gravel rides. I remember driving in a truck and going down this one gravel road and telling them, why would you want to build a wall here? You could create an entire outdoor economy and have people from all over the world come to ride their bikes in probably one of the most diverse places on the planet. Then, also the ecosystems, I mean there’s birding in the boot hill. There’s so many different types of animals that exist there and wildlife. Why would you want to build a wall and instead build an economy where you can actually have people camping? I think they were shocked by what I had to say. One, I don’t think that they’d ever thought of that, but also I think the fact that I was trying to reframe this whole idea like, walls are divisive. Walls don’t help us build community. I feel like places like Deming do need community. They do need to embrace this idea of what it’s like to be a border community. When they do that, then they can expand their thoughts around what an economy could also look like for their communities.
So, I feel like those are the kinds of conversations that we should be having, where we’re challenging folks to think about issues from, that are intersectional, that it’s not just about climate. It’s about everything else that each and every one of us experiences. I feel like when it comes to conversations around jobs in an economy, I think those are the kind of uncomfortable conversations that we need to be having. I feel like organizing is the only way to do that.
Courtney Naquin: James, I would love to pass the question to you too about any of this that also resonated with you about what the economy sort of looked like before oil and gas.
James Hiatt: Certainly, I think this area has been exposed to centuries of exploitation and extractive economy. The oil and gas in southwest Louisiana really began with World War II. The large refineries and plastic producers that exist now grew out of the plants that were built in the 1940s to help support the war effort. What we had going on before that was kind of a tourism. We had a beautiful lake that people would come and visit and swim in. Also, the other major economic driver was the port and lumber. We had huge lumber mills, sawmills through the 1800s that were here, clearing forests and then providing wood for all over the nation. Before that, what we had was Indigenous populations all along these rivers who had built many different shell mounds and had an economy of their own, who lived off of the Earth, who lived out of these marshes and wetlands. That’s gone. That was colonized and pushed away. So, I guess the collective imagination of what southwest Louisiana has been before the last eighty to a hundred years when oil was found was this beautiful lake and beautiful river and the ability to recreate and enjoy being outside, being in nature.
That has been replaced by these flares. These flares, these pipelines, these distillation towers, and so the thought of many is that, well, without the flares, we wouldn’t be Lake Charles. But Lake Charles was here before the plants came. People lived in this area for hundreds of years before we had oil and gas. Their economy wasn’t based on extracting. The Indigenous population’s economy was based upon living on the land. To stand on the shoulders of all of our ancestors, and to sit here in this place and have the ability to choose one path or the other will dictate what happens for all of our descendants. God willing, we have moved in a direction, and be a place of abundance, and allow people to reframe their thinking out of fear and move towards love.
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Courtney Naquin: I want to ask a last quick question. Of course, y’all live several states away but are part of the same Permian to Gulf frack cycle. So, what happens in Angelica’s state will inevitably touch southwest Louisiana in some sort of way. You both expressed very similar ideas for reimagining the future. But, can you both talk a bit about what needs to happen to start imagining a new process? What do conversations with communities look like? Who should be involved? How can people and families on the frontlines be a part of that imagining process?
Angelica Rubio: Yeah, I mean, I think for New Mexico, what I've always wanted to do is spend time in the southeastern part of the state learning about the individuals who live there, the folks who are working in these industries, and try to really better understand what the industry provides for them. What does it not provide? Because there are also a lot of gaps in terms of services. Part of it has to be done, for me, it's grassroots. It’s really developing ideas from the bottom up. But in doing so, understanding what that analysis is. And really having some grace around the people who live in the southeastern part of the state also because the region has become so conservative over time. We have had Democratic leadership that has either disengaged or has decided that it's not worth fighting for. It’s become a region that has become so isolated that political infrastructure doesn’t exist in those areas.
So, you have a growing Latino population, for example, in that part of the state that is not being engaged at all when it comes to issues around politics, but also around issues of social and racial justice. I think, for me, that is very, very important. So, I feel like that’s one of the first steps. But I think one thing that is absolutely necessary, there is just so much misinformation around what it means to transition away or move away from oil and gas. The amount of just misinformation even just around electric vehicles, and the conversations around affordability. Where are they going to get the electricity to pay for these? It’s just such a massive amount of misinformation that the oil and gas industry and the extractive industries have basically invested in. They’re putting money in to make sure that they continue to thrive. So, I think what we need is some accountability in making sure that…we can’t actually have a conversation until stakeholders actually push back on these ideas. We have to be able to talk about solar and wind and not have people say oh well, the blades, how are we going to recycle the blades or the batteries in thirty years. It’s like, it’s just the most crazy thing that I’ve just been hearing and reading from people that we can’t even address climate because we can’t even just have a basic conversation around what needs to happen. So, I feel like those are the priorities, two priority things that I feel like need to happen is how do we invest political and power building infrastructure in the southeastern part of the state. Also, how are we being accountable to the misinformation that’s out there about what a real transition means and what that actually really could potentially look like for our state.
Courtney Naquin: Definitely. Thank you so much. James, I’d love to pass the question to you. How do you start having conversations with people?
James Hiatt: Yeah, thank you. Angelica, I think this part that you just mentioned about this misinformation and what that means, it appears to me that oil and gas is using what I was calling the tobacco playbook, you know, “we’re just gonna infiltrate and fill the atmosphere with disinformation even though we know the truth and we know, we will intentionally try to make things look different than they actually are.” For me, I think what needs to happen is a real understanding of the cost of not doing anything, what our inaction has led to. We have been kicking this can down the road for a long time, whether we believe in climate change, whether we believe that benzene causes cancer. What needs to happen in order to transition is a good honest look in the mirror and an honest look down the road to what will be if we continue on this path. Solar is a partial solution, wind can be a partial solution. We don’t have something to plug in directly today that will get us off of the sauce. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t address the problem that we see staring us in the face everyday. Sea level rise is real and we will watch that happen whether we do anything or not. We will see the coast of Louisiana erode like it has been for the last forty years. That will continue until the Gulf of Mexico is on the doorstep of New Orleans and Lake Charles and places like that.
I think a real good motivator is the recognition of the interdependency of all of us. We are connected, New Mexico and Louisiana are connected on the other side with humans that live in all parts of the world, in Afghanistan, in China, in Russia, and Ukraine. We are interdependent in a way that, many times, we prefer not to recognize. So the actions we do and the inactions we do matter. Our connection and our interdependency is the root of all of us. We can do better and we should do better. If we love our neighbor, we will begin to do better. Thank y’all.
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Courtney Naquin: I hope this episode got you thinking about what a different, newly imagined future could look like, and what it might take to get there. If you have any ideas or insights, stories of hard conversations or good conversations that you’ve had, shoot us a note at the show. We’d love to hear from you. And as always, thanks to Roddy Hughes, our producer, Thomas Walsh, our editor, Purly Gates for her tunes, and our project manager, Natalie McLendon, and to all of you for listening. We hope you’ll be back for the next episode. See you then. (music)