These stories are not in a particular order, but were chosen based on their impact to the country, the globe, the state and the Navajo Nation
DEB HAALAND NOMINATED AS INTERIOR SECRETARY
Deb Haaland of the New Mexico Laguna Pueblo was confirmed as the first Native American Cabinet secretary in the history of the U. S. and took office March 16.
She is also one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress.
As the Secretary of the Interior Department, she is in the unique position of being an Indigenous leader with a position in the U. S. Government that allows her to take measures to countermand many of the Department’s damaging moves against sacred lands.
JAN. 6 INSURRECTION
The attack on the U. S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an effort to overturn the defeat of the re-election of 45th U. S. President Donald Trump was intended to disrupt the joint session of Congress that assembled to count the electoral votes and formalize President-elect Joseph Biden’s victory.
The violence and occupation of the building by rioters, who assaulted Capitol Police officers resulted in the evacuation of the Capitol Complex and the death of one officer the day after responding to the riot. His death was followed by four other officers who committed suicide within seven months of the revolt. One-hundred-38 officers were injured. Five non-officers died before, during, or following the event.
The January 6 insurrection led to an investigation which is still going on. It has also been a catalyst to a movement called “Stop the Steal,” an audit in Arizona, which was followed by state lawmakers around the country introducing more than 68 post-election audit bills, at least nine of which have been signed into law.
Several states have considered holding their own recounts of the 2020 election, claiming there may have been fraud.
GETTING OUT OF AFGHANISTAN
President Joe Biden set a deadline for all U. S. troops to leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021. The withdrawal was completed on Aug. 30. Four days before, on Aug. 26, an ISIS suicide bombing occurred at the airport, killing at least 170 people.
The plan was to get Afghans who assisted U. S. military troops, and their families out during the evacuation and resettle them in the U. S.
The exodus was tense, at times violent. Some people were denied entry onto transport planes because of issues with their paperwork. One report says more than 180 Afghans and 13 U. S. service members lost their lives in the rush to airlift people out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
The departure ended the U. S.’s longest war. It left some Afghan helpers behind.
CONTINUATION OF COVID, VARIANTS AND EFFECTS
COVID-19 is not new in 2021. However, its continuation through the year has had significant effects on the U. S. and around the world in the areas of health care, and the economy, as well as education.
First responders and essential workers have been hard-hit. Continuing to draw paychecks while finding themselves amidst sick patients and performing jobs for long hours, some nurses and doctors traveling across the country to help out overwhelmed facilities.
COVID-19’s presence has highlighted the difficulties of teaching students without access to the computers and the internet, as well as the issues faced by homes without running water, and crowded living conditions.
Supply chains have been affected. Shortages, such as toilet paper, have been noted. Businesses have closed when they could not transition to online activity.
The U. S. has seen the rise of Zoom, a communications technology platform that allows for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social communication.
In addition, there have been ongoing controversies across the country about reopening school classrooms, holding large gatherings for sports, concerts, airplanes, and entering businesses, such as restaurants.
Notably, there have been many disagreements, some of them violent, about wearing masks and getting vaccinated.
A number of well-known political figures, and media personalities have promoted a variety of unproven treatments and “cures” for COVID-19, and discouraged use of vaccines, while getting the vaccines themselves. The messaging has confused many people.
CLIMATE CHANGE
Evidence of climate change from severe weather phenomena in the U. S. 2021 included the three largest fires – the Bootleg, Dixie, and Caldor, which together burned roughly 1.6 million acres with smoke traveling from the West Coast to New York City.
The federal government declared a water shortage on the Colorado River in August for the first time, triggering mandatory water consumption cuts for Southwestern states starting in 2022.
A heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in late June killed hundreds of people in the U. S. and in British Columbia, Canada. Scientists said the heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change.
A tornado outbreak on Dec. 10 and 11 that flattened a candle factory in Mayfield, Ky., killing at least 76, also killed 6 when an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill. was hit.
In August, Category 4 Hurricane IDA cut off power to more than a million customers in Mississippi and Louisiana while it destroyed homes and uprooted trees. Then it went inland and triggered flash flood emergencies in the Northeast, where it killed dozens of people, drowning many of them in basement apartments in New York City. The damage it did is estimated at approximately $60 billion, maybe more.
The state of Tennessee experienced some of the destructive flash floods that destroyed more than 270 homes and killed more than two dozen people, including seven-month-old-twins.
Fatal flash floods also ravaged parts of Western Europe and China’s Henan provice in mid-July. More than 200 people lost their lives in Germany and Belgium. More than 300 people were killed in Zhengzhou.
A deep-freeze hit Texas in February. Electricity generation ground to a halt and about four-million people lost power. According to one analysis, the weather took more than 200 lives, but another study of the situation indicated as many as a thousand people may have died as a result of the freeze. The economic toll was estimated to have reached $130 billion.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott originally blamed the outages on frozen wind turbines and solar panels.
Outside the U. S., rain fell for the first time in August at the summit of Greenland. It was the heaviest rainfall on the ice sheet since record keeping began in 1950.
CLIMATE CHANGE RESPONSE
President Joe Biden rejoined the global climate pact known as the Paris Agreement within hours of being sworn in as president in Jan. 20.
In April, he pledged to cut U. S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. Nevertheless, the United Nations says a huge gap remains between what has been committed to and what scientists say is needed to curb emissions.
In August, the U. N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its latest report summarizing the state of climate research.
The authors concluded humans have caused the climate crisis and that some of the changes are irreversible. To halt the trend, scientists say countries must make deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions while removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
At this point scientists say the planet has warmed by more than one degree Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels and is now headed toward 1.5 degrees, which is a critical threshold.
In November, world leaders gathered in Glasgow, Scotland for the climate change summit known as COP26.
Nearly 200 countries signed the Glasgow Climate Pact, which included the first acknowledgment of the rule of burning fossil fuels in perpetuating the climate crisis.
The final pact showed some progress, but it did not get countries to agree to phase out coal for power generation, only to reduce it. Negotiations about climate financing – in which wealthy nations would help developing nations deal with the climate crisis - broke down.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham attended the COP26 summit. She also issued an Executive Order on Addressing Climate Change and Energy Waste Prevention as one of her first actions in the Roundhouse. That order committed the state to achieve greenhouse gas emissions reductions of at least 45 percent by 2030.
A landmark Energy Transition Act requiring 100 percent carbon-free electricity in the state by 2050 was passed in 2019.
The state implemented a natural gas waste rule that requires 98 percent gas capture by 2026 and is on the cusp of implementing an ozone precursor rule that will have the collateral benefit of reducing methane emissions by over 851 million pounds every year from the oil and gas industry – the state’s largest greenhouse gas emitter.
The state is also taking steps to de-carbonize its second largest greenhouse gas-emitting sector: transportation. A discussion draft of proposed clean car rules was released in November and will go before the Environmental Improvement Board in 2022. A clean fuel standard, which will lower the carbon intensity of transportation fuels sold in New Mexico, will be an administration priority in the upcoming legislative session.
Other upcoming legislative priorities related to climate change include codifying a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 into state law, as well as the Hydrogen Hub Act, which will lay the foundation for a clean, low-carbon hydrogen economy in New Mexico.
