I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The Obama administration issued proposed rules Tuesday that impose the first nationwide limits on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. The new rules require American cars and light truck fleet to meet a fuel efficiency standard of 35.5 miles a gallon by 2016.
The Times notes that the proposed rules are a way “to resolve legal and regulatory conflicts among several federal agencies and a group of states, led by California” and including New Mexico.
The Land of Enchantment and more than a dozen states have sought to impose stricter mileage and emissions standards than those set by Congress.
New Mexico has been involved in the fight to regulate vehicle emissions since late 2007 .
That’s when New Mexico adopted the so-called California clean car emissions standards, meaning that it would impose stricter emission standards than the federal government’s on vehicles sold in New Mexico. But a month later, in December 2007, the EPA denied California the waiver to institute the tougher emission standards. No waiver for California getting meant the other states, including New Mexico, couldn’t adopt the tougher standards either.
New Mexico and other states then sued EPA over the denial.
But President Obama earlier this year asked EPA to reconsider this decision and the agency issued a waiver to California this summer.
The proposed rules for national limits on greenhouse emissions are in a 1,227-page regulation that will go through a 60-day public comment period before it is completed early next year.
