FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 29, 2016
Contact: James Hallinan (505) 660-2216
New Mexico and 16 Attorneys General to work together on key investigations to protect the nation’s progress on climate change
Santa Fe, NM – Attorney General Hector Balderas announced today that New Mexico has joined Attorneys General from across the nation in an unprecedented coalition of 17 top law enforcement officials to protect and expand progress the nation has made in combatting climate change. The states agreed to work together on key investigations, such as ongoing or any potential investigations into whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public on the impact of climate change on their businesses.
“We have been impacted by climate change, and we see its drastic effects in New Mexico—extreme drought, increased risk of severe forest fires, and the ruin of our wildlife and natural habitats,” Attorney General Balderas said. “Our efforts will ensure that progress is made on climate change and that the public is fully aware of the effects on the health and well-being of New Mexico families.”
New Mexico and many of the states in the coalition have worked together on previous multistate environmental efforts, including pressing the EPA to limit climate change pollution from fossil-fueled electric power plants, defending federal rules controlling climate change emissions from large industrial facilities, and pushing for federal controls on emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane emissions from the oil and natural gas industry.
The national coalition on climate change includes attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and the US Virgin Islands.
All of the members of the new coalition are part of a coalition of 25 states, cities and counties that intervened to defend the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Power Plan” against legal challenge. Today, the interveners filed a brief to the DC Circuit Court in support of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan rule, which requires fossil-fueled power plants, the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the nation, to cut their emissions pursuant to the Clean Air Act.
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