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Bouquet: Sterba

Given the circumstances, few, if any, New Mexicans are better equipped than Jeff Sterba to lobby Congress on global warming. Sterba, head of PNM Resources, which runs the Albuquerque-based PNM power company, should be on anyone's short list of people whose counsel on energy issues ought to be heard.

At a recent Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions symposium in Washington, D.C., Sterba urged Congress to act now to resist global climate change. Sterba also is chairman of the Climate Change Task Force of the Edison Electric Institute, which lobbies for the utility industry. He's vice president of the institute itself and is scheduled to take over as president this summer.

"The sooner you start to make changes, the less draconian the changes will be," Sterba explained to The Tribune in "PNM chief urges Congress to act now," (Tribune, Dec. 15). The utility industry needs a lot of lead time to make environmental adjustments, which can involve extensive renovations and construction of new plants, Sterba has said. Utilities such as PNM find it a lot easier to make beneficial shifts if they can count on knowing up front what's coming.

Sterba's advice is striking, because he is an executive in an industry that many criticize for emitting greenhouse gases that fuel global warming. He's deeply knowledgeable of energy issues and genuinely interested in thinking creatively about them. His support for anti-global-warming initiatives should carry a lot of weight in an industry that could make a big difference.

Sterba, let's be clear, is not an environmental radical. He embraces the complexity of global warming, won't necessarily support just any solution, doesn't want his industry to take on an unfair burden and favors conservation and efficiencies that motorists and household consumers can effect.

But his perspective is important in the current debates. His views should help move the nation toward taking global warming more seriously. And his position at Edison should help raise New Mexico's - justifiably - considerable national profile on energy issues.

Brickbat: roller shoes

No, we're not safety fanatics.

We do not want to eliminate every cunning device that adults have invented over the years for children - devices the suspicious might imagine were designed to drop, trip, catapult or otherwise fling kids into the afterlife. Monkey bars? Swings? BB guns? Toboggans? Plastic numchucks? Balance boards? Fine: Grandfather them in.

But against the latest craze, reported by The Tribune Tuesday in "Shoes without brakes," we must draw a line.

Those sneakers with one wheel in the heel are awfully unstable. Kids are gliding on them everywhere like vampires, falling, running into people, breaking bones and shedding blood. There's enough stress in public buildings and sidewalks already without having to deal with pedestrians on wheels - which is why Albuquerque Public Schools, for example, has banned them.

High-rise sheet-metal slides without rails are one thing. But shoes with built-in banana peels are something else. Let's not make things worse.