Students advocate climate control bill

Several UNM students are taking a stand in the national campaign to pass a climate control bill.

1Sky is a national organization campaigning for the bill, which the senate will vote on before December.

The organization was founded in 2007 to generate a grassroots effort that would prompt strong federal involvement in global warming by 2010, said Aaron Myran, 1Sky organizer of the New Mexico coalition.

Myran said the New Mexico branch is staffed mainly by UNM student volunteers.

“This kind of commitment to the cause from the youth is so important,” Myran said. “Younger people are seeing their future and they see the need for immediate change.”
Myran said 1Sky will host house parties throughout the state in October. The parties will provide phone banks to call New Mexico legislators and strengthen support for the bill.

Student Elizabeth Bennett said the group has been handing out postcards that prompt students and citizens to call Senator Udall and Senator Bingaman to push for
legislation. The two New Mexico senators have said they support climate change legislation.

“The conditions of the environment are at an extremely critical point,” Bennett said. “To think that we could miss an opportunity as powerful as passing strong legislation would be catastrophic to the future of the entire planet.”
Bennett said the UNM community and the general public need to take a stance on climate change.

“I think that the public complacency is on account of a lack of understanding about how serious the issue of global warming is,” she said. “What could be more important that the fate of planet earth?”

“People don’t understand it is an apocalyptic scenario, and there are rich powerful people who want to keep it that way,” she said.