New Mexico environmental activists draped banners reading “Exxon profits, NM pays,” outside the New Mexico Roundhouse Tuesday evening, protesting the oil and gas conglomerate’s sponsorship of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
It’s an extension of ongoing protests by activists, including a recently launched satyrical campaign by WildEarth Guardians and The Yes Men that features a parody oil and gas company intended to draw attention to efforts to expand the uses of oil and gas wastewater in New Mexico.
An emailed request for comment to an Exxon-Mobil spokesperson went unreturned late Tuesday.
Zoey Craft, the communications manager for Youth United Against Climate Crisis Action (YUCCA), noted that oil and gas industry members were meeting just across town at the Santa Fe Convention Center for the annual convention hosted by the lobbying organization New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.
She called Exxon-Mobil’s sponsorship “a greed and greenwashing attempt,” in an interview with Source NM Tuesday.
“Exxon is sponsoring the Balloon Fiesta as a way to essentially distract from the fact that they’re causing so much harm to our communities while behind closed doors, here they are sponsoring this oilland gas conference, essentially,” Craft said. “So we’re here to kind of draw the contrast there.”
YUCCA organizer, Zephyr Jaramillo (Isleta/San Felipe), noted global weather records due to heating driven primarily by the burning of oil and gas continue to be broken, with the hottest years on record all in the past decade
“It’s been some of the warmest weather for a Balloon Fiesta’s ever, and Exxon’s still sponsoring it,” they said.
