The Environmental Sustainability Board (ESB) met on Thursday, April 16, 2026, at 5:30 PM in Council Chambers and via Zoom. The meeting covered the New Mexico Climate Action Plan, a climate marketing and engagement plan from Firebrand Creative, and Council direction to propose a single-use plastic bag ordinance. Reports from board liaisons and the Sustainability Manager were also presented.
Amy Rosebrough, Climate Action Planning Coordinator for NMED’s Climate Change Bureau, presented the 2025 CAP. Key points:
Amanda Larringa (with Lignail Chacon listening) presented the behavioral science-based plan for a seven-year contract. Highlights:
Chair David Hampton reported that the County Council (April 7, 2026) asked the ESB to propose a single-use plastic bag ordinance within 90 days (81 days remaining). The ESB discussed forming a working group:
All right, it's 5 30, so we're called order. Um roll call. Um member Growe, Member S. Blair, um Member Leckle, and um Member Barnes and uh Member Hampton and Member Chandler online. And we're still missing member um C. Blair Country. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, Carly is gone. Yeah. Thank you. I forgot about that. All right, public comment for items not on the agenda. None. Does anyone have any changes to the agenda? Agenda's approved unanimously. Does anyone have any uh changes to the minutes? Minutes approved unanimously. And with that, we're ready for our uh New Mexico Climate Action Plan. Okay, good evening uh board. Tonight we have Amy Rose Rosebrow with us. She's the climate action planning coordinator for New Mexico Environment Department, Climate Change Bureau. And uh following the release of this climate action plan back in December 2025, she's begun transitioning and leading the plan's development um and implementation. So her current work focuses on putting these strategies into practice to meet the state's climate goals. And tonight I'll hand it over to Amy. Thank you Anhelika. Um, yes, my name is Amy Rosebro. I work for the New Mexico Environment Department. I'm just gonna go ahead and share my screen really quick. Okay, so I am the Climate Action Planning Coordinator for the New Mexico Environment Department Climate Change Bureau, and like Anelika said, we're going to be presenting on the New Mexico Climate Action Plan for you all today. Um we'll just kick it off by talking about climate change. So what causes climate change is human activities such as burning fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases and in turn warm the planet and drive climate change. And as New Mexicans, we feel the effects of climate change every day. We feel it in our health, our security, and our wallets. Um we experience more heat illness, respiratory illness, infectious diseases, and mental health issues. We also um, as you all know, experience more wildfires and drought and floods, and lack of home insurance availability. And lastly, we really feel this in higher food prices and home insurance premiums, utility bills, um, and more health care bills. But in order to further understand green uh uh climate change in New Mexico, I want to give you a little background on what the top greenhouse gas emissions are within the state and where those are coming from. And so um a greenhouse gas emissions inventory is how we at the state and um governments across the world, assess uh the types of emissions that are happening and where they're coming from. They enable us to evaluate progress towards our climate goals as well. And we recently have done one for 2023 greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and what it showed us was that oil and gas industry was the top emitting sector in New Mexico, um, as it has been for quite a while, and that came in at 45% of our state's emissions, and then following that is transportation at 23%, and agriculture at 15%, and then electricity generation at 9%. So you can see in this pie graph here the dominance that the oil and gas industry has over the emissions in New Mexico. You see transportation, agriculture and electricity generation taking up a big chunk of that graph as well. And then buildings, other industrial sources, and waste and materials are more of a nominal impact, but still important as we're trying to lower emissions across the state. We if you look at this graph can see that from 2005 to 2021, we've decreased emissions by 14%. And then moving forward, we further decrease these emissions from 2021 to 2023 by 8%. And that is good progress. And the targets for the state of New Mexico are first of all to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030, and that is compared to levels in 2005. And then we also want to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, also compared to 2005 levels. But we are going to strive for as much of the emissions reductions to be through mitigation as compared to offsets. And then as it continues, the blue line is at the top still, and that's if we do nothing else, if we continue business as usual, our emissions will not reach our targets.