Conservationists want Arizona lawmakers to fight environmental rollbacks
Click play to listen to this article.
Budget cuts and regulatory rollbacks are roiling Arizona conservation groups to demand their representatives is Washington D.C. stop "rubber-stamping" cuts to environmental regulations and agency funding.
Groups such as Chispa Arizona, the community organizing program for the League of Conservation Voters, said rising energy costs are hurting working people and providing corporate interests with unwarranted record profits.
Vianey Olivarria, executive director of Chispa, fears decades of work toward renewable energy goals will be erased.
© iStock - ventdusud
"The utilities just rolled back their promises to transition to clean energy by 2030," Olivarria pointed out. "They just said, 'We're not going to do that anymore.' It's really alarming because renewable energy, clean renewable energy, is the only way that we can move forward in Arizona."
Olivarria argued in Arizona, utility regulators are standing aside while power companies are abandoning promises to develop renewable energy sources while they raise rates. She added the people feeling it the most are low-income families, working families, people of color and unsheltered people.
She stressed Arizona's climate is among the most extreme in the world, and for more than a decade, summer brings record-breaking heat and record numbers of heat-related deaths. She cautioned the policy changes could have long-term effects.
"These cuts will devastate American innovation for the next generation for clean-energy technologies," Olivarria contended. "We're facing what I think is a climate crisis that is existential to our generation."
Olivarria argued the officials elected to the Arizona Corporation Commission, charged with regulating utility rates, have turned a blind eye to cost gouging by power companies. She believes their first job is to protect Arizonans.
"They are not doing that right now," Olivarria underscored. "We are facing a rate hike in October by APS of 10 percent. That would mean for people who are barely surviving on their minimum wage jobs, the rent, groceries and then on top of it, a rate hike on their electricity bill."
