NM Daily Lobo 01 20 15

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DAILY LOBO new mexico

TUESDAY January 20, 2015 | Volume 119 | Issue 84

The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895

Specialist ActionNM forum draws big audience discusses changing climate ACTIONNM SPEAKERS RESONATE WITH AUDIENCE

There were plenty of memorable quotes from each speaker from the forum’s panel which drew passionate responses from the audience. Here are some of them.

Rep. Javier Martinez

David Gutzler

By Jonathan Baca Recently the U.S. National Weather Service, one of the agencies that each year looks at global surface temperatures from weather stations around the world and averages them, reported that 2014 was the hottest year on Earth since they began compiling data in the late 19th century. The Daily Lobo recently talked with David Gutzler, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences specializing in large-scale climate change, about the state of climate change today and what the future looks like for New Mexico. DL: How has your research been involved in providing evidence of global climate change? DG: “I was a lead author on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report that came out in late 2013 — that is assembled by the United Nations every six or seven years — to assess climate change research. That report confirmed previous assessments that there was incontrovertible evidence that the planet is warming up; that there was increased confidence that the increase was at least partially due to human activities, mainly increased greenhouse gas concentrations; and that the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and the increase in surface temperature is highly likely to continue this century. “The report that I worked on was Volume One in a three-part assessment. It was then followed by two other volumes that had to do with the impacts of what we see happening in the climate system, and possible approaches to doing something about it — so-called mitigation of climate change. The third part was designed to assess the possibility of doing something about increased emissions using various techniques, and what the possible implications of those different approaches would be. But it’s up to policy makers to use that information.” DL: How important is politics to the issues of getting people to understand climate change, and getting the powers that be to do something about it? DG: “Like any politicized issue, the answers you get from members of the public or policymakers depends crucially on precisely what question you’re asking and how it’s asked. The whole issue of climate change is eminently spin-able politically. So as scientists we need to be extremely careful to say that while there is incontrovertible evidence that the

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Q&A page 8

Hannah Glasgow / Daily Lobo / @glasgow_hannah

Seated among other state legislators, New Mexico Rep. Georgene Louis speaks at a forum at the Albuquerque Mennonite Church on Thursday. ActionNM held the forum for the legislators to discuss with the community political issues that would arise during the upcoming legislative session.

By David Lynch On Thursday, activist group ActionNM held a legislative forum to educate the community about political issues expected to arise during the upcoming legislative session, but none of the event’s coordinators expected the amount of interest from the citizens of Albuquerque. About 75 chairs were set up for the event, which was held at Albuquerque Mennonite Church and featured a panel of state senators and representatives. Once the event got underway, about 115 people had come, and some of them had to stand.

Mandy Pino, who is on ActionNM’s Steering Committee, helped coordinate the event and said she was awed by the size and energy of the crowd. “I was amazed. I’ve been in this room when we have 20 or 10 people, and I couldn’t believe it,” Pino said. “You could just feel it in that audience.” ActionNM is a community action network coordinated in conjunction with the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, UNM’s Peace Studies program and the Albuquerque community. Pino explained that the purpose of Thursday’s forum was to inform participants about issues

of peace and justice that would arise during the upcoming 60-day legislative session. Rick Meira, who served in the New Mexico House of Representatives from 1991 to 2014, moderated the panel and also said the turnout was unexpected. “Tonight’s crowd was a pleasant surprise. I expected it was going to be a good group, but I didn’t expect it to be standing room only in a big auditorium,” Meira said. “I’m very pleased that they wanted to come, and I was also very impressed by their questions.”

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ActionNM page 3

• “I believe when Democrats don’t stand up for democratic values, we lose.” • “When (Gov. Susana Martinez) says that driver’s licenses are about public safety and that we need to get rid of them because of fraud and that it’s not about immigration — let me tell you, as a person of immigrant background, it is about immigration to my friends and my family and my colleagues. And her proposals are nothing more than an attack against New Mexico’s immigrant families and children.” • “We have to figure out how to get access to healthcare to every single person in New Mexico. Why are we excluding immigrants? It makes no sense to me. California is about to do it. If California, the state that gave us Proposition 187 and Arnold Schwarzenegger, can do it, then we can do it.”

Rep. Georgene Louis • “I think education is the core of our democratic values. If we are able to provide our children with a quality education, that is going to solve a lot of our problems.” • “There’s a lot of access issues when we’re talking about access to quality healthcare, access to quality education, access to all of these preventative measures that can help the underserved. That’s one of my passions. I really want to level the playing field in our state.”

Sen. Gerald “Jerry” Ortiz y Pino • “A lot of times when people say ‘we want bipartisanship’, they mean ‘I want you to knuckle under to my agenda.’” • “A peace bill makes so much sense when you look at the level of violence in our society today.”

See page 3 for more

Making a splash

Kanan Mammadli / Daily Lobo / @KenanMammadly

New Mexico swimmer Samantha Moss participates in the women 200-yard butterfly event against Colorado State at Seidler Natatorium on Saturday. The Lobos’ swimming and diving team defeated the Rams with a team score of 174-126. See page 9 for the complete story.


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