Woke op-ed: NM’s ‘free’ college holding state ‘hostage’ because oil & gas funds it
In a hilarious move, the left-wing “Source New Mexico” blog ran an op-ed by a person called Jonathan Juarez-Alonzo, who the website says “is a queer, two-spirit Indigenous climate activist” who is “working on the frontlines of combating environmental racism and ecological destruction here in New Mexico.”
Alonzo claims the extreme taxpayer-funded “free” college passed last year by the Democrat-dominated Legislature doesn’t go far enough because of “climate change” and funds from oil and gas being used to fund the socialist program. Because of the supposed climate crisis, Alonzo says he is “on an indefinite leave of absence from the University of New Mexico”
Oil and gas made up 33 percent of the state’s revenue in the last fiscal year.
“[F]unding these scholarships with volatile oil revenues, students like myself feel our futures are being held hostage: Do we invest in ourselves and take advantage of free higher education? Or should we even be wasting these last fleeting years of our youth in a classroom when our elected leaders are leading us down a path toward total climate collapse,” writes Alonzo.
Throughout the rest of the piece, he claims victimhood, invoking the name of slain fentanyl addict George Floyd, saying that is why he quit college to go into “criminology and social work,” writing that he grew up “surrounded by one of the most violent police forces in the nation.”
Alonzo then calls for the total decimation of the oil, gas, and all extractive industries, writing, “We’re lacking the political willpower to dismantle and transform an industry that holds every aspect of our state in economic hostage.”
“New Mexico is handing out symbolic victories like tuition-free college that are meaningless when thousands of New Mexicans are being displaced by wildfires, and our farmers are losing their crops because the acequias are running dry,” he writes, claiming that fires and droughts are caused by the fictitious “climate change” emergency.
He claims “real solutions” entail “investments in proven renewable energy and battery technologies, and investments in industry cleanup (which our politicians should make the polluters cover),” but does not take into account that states that have implemented far-left enviro-Marxist policies like California are facing raging blackouts statewide, which have led to the deaths of people.
Solar and wind have extreme environmental impacts due to the materials mined to make these “renewable” energies a reality. Also, the ecological impact kills countless wild animals, such as solar killing around 138,600 birds annually and wind turbines responsible for about 538,000 bird deaths and 900,000 bat deaths every year.
But despite the radical Democrats passing the Green New Deal via the “Energy Transition Act” to totally annihilate the oil and gas industry, that is still not enough for Alonzo and the folks at “Source New Mexico.”
