Bill and Lisa Brown during the construction of their home in Hondo Mesa

For Lisa and me, Taos is in the middle of everywhere we want to be and almost everything we want to do. A short trip in any direction takes us to alpine forests on stunning mountains, Juniper-Piñon forests on the lower hills and mesas, red rock canyons, sagebrush mesas, the Rio Grande Gorge, the High Plains, the San Luis Valley, the Jemez Caldera, the Great Sand Dunes. We came here for the land, the diversity of cultures, the architecture, food we love to eat every day, and the relative isolation from too many people, too much traffic, too much noise, and too much light at night to see the heavens.

We came to retire and live a life of travel and exploration with our new home as a base. But serendipity led us into new kinds of compelling work that now fills our calendars in ways we could not possibly have imagined. For the first time in our lives we are our own bosses, commanding networks of people and organizations dedicated to a bright and beautiful future for our children, our community, our region, our country, and our planet. The energy here is so great that it flows far beyond our valley and exerts influence in huge proportion to our population.

Taos is a model of sustainability and future thinking for communities throughout the arid lands of the American Southwest and elsewhere. Our general architectural style is energy-efficient and has been that way for centuries. Taoseños use less than half the electricity demanded by the average American. Our adobe buildings respond passively to the seasons, storing heat in the winter while keeping cool in the summer. Most of the food we eat is produced nearby by people we know: neighbors who provide eggs and tamales, friends at Cerro Vista Farm and Rio Culebra Cooperative who sell us fruits, vegetables and beef.

Our local utility, Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, Inc. works in concert with its members to offer solar and wind power alternatives to the dirty energy that pollutes our land, water and atmosphere. Our town government has steadily produced legislation to require even more energy-use and water-use efficiency in our building stock. Local builders and citizens act independently to install solar photovoltaic (PV) and thermal panels, residential wind turbines, water catchment systems, and weatherization retrofits. These combined efforts serve our economy by increasing local circulation of the money we pay for energy rather than sending that money to out-of-state energy providers.

The progress of clean energy construction is such that Taos has real possibilities of becoming mostly independent of regional energy grids by 2020. Visitors to Taos should note the solar PV arrays at the University of New Mexico, Klauer Campus and over the parking lot the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, Inc. offices. New solar PV arrays are also being built at the Town’s water treatment plant and near Questa, about 25 miles north of Taos. A 30-megawatt solar PV array is under construction on 250 acres near Springer, NM, about 80 miles to the east. Meanwhile, local companies like Paradise Power and Valverde Energy have been installing solar PV and solar thermal systems on Taos homes for many years.

Our local non-profits are professional, assertive, and influential on a regional and national basis. Of very special note are Amigos Bravos and the Western Environmental Law Center whose powers of purpose and integrity have protected so much of our precious lands and waters and the air we breathe for the past two decades.

As a federal Earth Scientist for 36 years, my experience and skills in the energy and minerals sector have allowed me to create a consultancy in Taos that focuses on energy science, technology, policy and economics. My work is largely voluntary and sometimes paid, and I and my partners and associates have dedicated ourselves to assisting our community in its transition to a new energy economy. This transition is taking place globally and will define the future of our planet. I can’t imagine working on anything so powerful, so important, so fulfilling and in such a supportive environment as Lisa and I have in our community.

It is all here for Lisa and me. Out on a quiet mesa, we have a 360-degree perspective on mountains, the Rio Grande Gorge, Juniper and Piñon covered hills, an eternally changing sky – all seen from our small parcel of the sagebrush sea. We had not known that the sagebrush could be so vibrant. Our space is ever alive with cottontails and jackrabbits, coyotes, “wall” lizards who bask on our sun-warmed adobe, a quail covey among huge numbers of resident and migratory birds. From my office window I see all these and more. Magnificent hot-air balloons lift off nearby to float along the gorge and occasionally drift down for a landing on the road by our house. My panorama of the Taos Mountains section of the Sangre De Cristos extends from Pueblo Peak northward to the Latirs, with rounded Ute and San Antonio Mountains accenting the horizon. Our home is an ideal location for our being and our work – ever comfortable, ever serene, a place of true peace of mind for the rest of our lives.

www.billbrownclimatesolutions.blogspot.com
www.theclimateprojectus.org