Home, land neighborhoods

After 15 years of renting a four-room house and learning, from tending its flower and vegetable gardens, that home is about connection to land, my husband and I need a new home. Our landlords plan to move back here.

Forty years ago, a mentor told me, before you look for a house, find your neighborhood.

When "All politics is local" no longer holds true, what is a neighborhood? Most gatherings happen online; and "all politics" have gone online and turned federal.

My husband and I would love to live near food-growers who aim to live within our watershed's offerings of fuel and water. We'd welcome neighbors who consider nature our teacher. We don't want to live near a data center, a battery energy storage system (BESS), solar PVs or wind turbines, cell sites or smart meters. We'd like to keep our landline.

While we and many friends struggle to afford housing, water and nutrient dense food, rental prices have increased 74% in nine years; the cost of buying a new house has increased 82%. AirB&Bs and second homeowners now border our rental house.

Federally, The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) just rescinded the 2024 Conservation and Landscape Health Rule. For the USA's 245 million acres of BLM-managed public land, including 13.5 million acres in New Mexico, this reversal will prioritize mining, drilling, grazing and recreation over conservation. It goes into effects June 11, 2026.

When you lose your land, British climate journalist Rachel Donald says, you lose your mind.

In New Mexico, where my husband and I have lived for about 40 years, we're inundated with projects that take from the Earth faster than it can replenish and waste faster than the Earth can replenish the waste. Recently, Santa Fe County Commissioners have permitted the 700-acre Rancho Viejo solar/battery facility. Doña Ana County Commissioners have permitted Project Jupiter, a 1400-acre, $165 billion data center campus. Near Socorro, Green Data proposes building a $165 billion, 10,000-acre "green" AI-training data center that will rely heavily on solar PVs and battery storage. Gamma Resources seeks an exploratory permit to drill uranium in the Carson National Forest. The Los Alamos National Lab might double its production of plutonium pits (nuclear weapons), per year. The private equity firm Blackstone aims to buy PNM, the state's largest utility; and the state's regulatory staff just recommended approval of selling NM Gas Company to Bernhard Capital Partners, another private equity firm.

If an affordable neighborhood with legal protections for nature and public health still exists on Planet Earth, I don't know about it.

So-- what is home now, and how do we who aim to orient by nature proceed?

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND

In 2017, in his inaugural speech, China's leader Xi Jingping called for "an ecological civilization" that ensures "harmony between human and nature." He said that his administration would "encourage simple, moderate, green and low-carbon ways of life and oppose extravagance and excessive consumption." Xi Jingping promised to "take tough steps to stop and punish all activities that damage the environment."

Then, as China's president, he invested heavily in solar PVs, industrial wind turbines, EVs"and A.I.

I do not understand how anyone can call solar PVs, wind turbines, batteries or EVs "clean." Look at electronics (anything with a computer, including vehicles, appliances, TVs, smartphones, solar panels and batteries) from their cradles-to-graves! Look at the infrastructure they require! Manufacturing electronics involves a power grid, extractions, refining, fossil fuels, water, toxins and intercontinental shipping. Electronics do not biodegrade. Plus, they pose major fire hazards-- and emit toxins when they catch fire. And then, about 80% of solar components are manufactured in China using slave labor.

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