Ken Salazar has a climate and energy message for Democrats as they prepare to take on President Donald Trump’s machine in 2028. Let’s unite North American nations, especially with Mexico, to counter the Trump administration’s setbacks in global climate action.
The lawyer who led the Interior Department in the Obama administration and served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico under former President Joe Biden makes the case for a new era of cooperation in a memoir that explores his Colorado roots and his role as one of the state’s pioneering Hispanic politicians.
“What I’m looking for is this new American alliance,” Salazar said in a wide-ranging interview about his new book, Borderlands: My Fight for an Inclusive America.
The interview is a memoir, as well as his views on current anti-immigrant policies in Washington, how his upbringing on a ranch in Colorado shaped his political trajectory, and the role that Mexico’s current leader, President Claudia Sheinbaum, can play in creating a different politics around climate action.
“We are the continent of North America, and we have great potential to bring people together,” Salazar said. “Now our current administration is turning its back on that very positive policy.”
Salazar grew up in the San Luis Valley. His family’s roots in the San Luis Valley of Colorado and New Mexico date back to at least the 1600s. I grew up in a one-story adobe house with limited electricity and running water. He became a water lawyer and eventually won election to become the state’s first Hispanic attorney general, just before Colorado transitioned from a politically red state to a politically blue state. After winning the seat in 1999, Salazar recalls embarking on a road trip through the state, blasting folk songs, Mexican norteño music and Bruce Springsteen’s “This Land is Your Land.”
The memoir explores Salazar’s relationship with the Western landscape, detailing how his family’s stewardship contrasted sharply with the “exploitation” he witnessed from nearby absentee ranchers. In his book, Salazar says he has come to believe that “land can be healthy and productive if it is treated sustainably. There is no need to sacrifice one for the other.”
That ethos, which emphasizes both the use and conservation of the environment, was later seen when Salazar became director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources under former Democratic Gov. Roy Romer and when he served in the Colorado State Senate from 2005 to 2009. But when former President Barack Obama nominated Salazar to be his first Secretary of the Interior, some environmentalists criticized his aggressiveness in mineral development on public lands.
Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity told NPR in 2008, “Ken Salazar has very close ties to ranching and mining and very traditional, old-fashioned Western extractive industries.” “We were promised that President Obama’s inauguration would bring about change.”
Mr. Salazar served as secretary from 2009 to 2013, when his administration enacted some of the nation’s first climate regulations to hurt coal dependence while promoting natural gas development on federal lands. At the time, coal provided about half of the country’s electricity supply, and Salazar argued that natural gas was a bridge fuel from more carbon-rich sources.
Salazar told POLITICO that while there is still room for natural gas development on public lands, the U.S. also needs to “recognize the enormous impact that fossil fuels have on our planet.”
“We need to deal with these realities,” he says.
During Salazar’s tenure, Interior developed the nation’s first federal offshore wind program and held the first national wind lease sale in 2013, just months after Salazar resigned. Offshore wind will make little progress until the Biden administration strengthens the program as part of a national effort to combat climate change. But the emerging industry has faced major setbacks under the Trump administration, with companies facing pressure from the White House to abandon offshore wind leases and invest in fossil energy instead.
Mr. Salazar, 71, politely declared that President Trump’s attack on renewable energy was “the wrong way to go about it.”
Asked whether publishing his book precedes a return to politics, Salazar said his immediate passion will be convincing Democrats of a “borderland agenda” in both the upcoming midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election.
Asked whether she would run, the former secretary said her granddaughter said, “Dad, one thing at a time.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
When you served as U.S. ambassador under the Biden administration, you spoke at length about the need for a new agreement between the United States and Mexico. What will that relationship look like?
If we create a new energy and climate agreement for North America, we can honestly set an example for the rest of the world of what can be done with renewable energy. And even the traditional energy that we need doesn’t transfer from one day to the next.
Consider Arizona, one of the most solar-rich places in the world. And to the south, the state of Sonora (in Mexico) has vast solar energy resources. The interconnectivity of power grids will be important.
Consider minerals such as lithium. Sonora is home to one of the world’s largest lithium deposits. We will also think about how lithium will be used in future batteries. It’s all part of an integrated supply chain.
Why do you think such collaborations haven’t happened yet?
Because of historical carelessness.
We need to create a stronger Western Hemisphere, and various presidents have focused on that. President Bush did a lot in several areas. I think President Obama has done a great job.
I helped lead some of the things that we’re doing in the national parks in Big Bend National Park and the state of Coahuila (in Mexico) to create this binational protected area (and) some of the agreements on Colorado River Protocol 319 (Agreement between the United States and Mexico for the Management of Colorado River Waters).
Unfortunately, 2016 is here and this president, who has never visited Mexico as president, continues this indifferent agenda. This is the wrong approach and I hope it will be reversed.
Your Hispanic heritage seems to have had a big influence on your life and career. As you talk about in your book, your family’s footprint in the West goes back to when the land belonged to Mexico. How has your relationship with the land shaped you?
I am proud to be a Mexican American and a citizen of the United States. My family has lived in what is now the southwestern United States since the 1600s. They settled up the Rio Grande in New Mexico, in places like Santa Fe and as far north as Española. After the Mexican-American War, they moved to a ranch in the San Luis Valley and we have been there for over 170 years. I’m not going anywhere.
If you look at the current situation, there are approximately 50 million Mexican Americans, 70 million Latinos, and 130 million Mexicans in the United States. It is important to recognize history in order to understand where we are now and to plan for a future that respects the sovereignty and history of both countries. They also understand the importance of working together.
There has been a lot of ink spilled on the Trump administration’s border wall, most recently due to plans to install border infrastructure in Big Bend National Park. What do you think about the border wall and its presence on public lands?
Building physical walls is not the solution here. Solutions need to go beyond the borders themselves and address the reality of the flow of illicit products, including drugs, from the Americas to Mexico.
We have to have secure borders and modern borders, and I think that’s where the United States, both Democrats and Republicans, are going wrong. We need secure borders, we need modern borders, and we need technology to fix our borders. But that will need to be done by both the United States and Mexico. Borders cannot be secured by just one side.
Do you see climate as a potential political unifying factor in your vision of “North American energy independence”?
It is a positive, powerful and unifying challenge and opportunity that we have.
The reality is that Mexico had its first president, Claudia Sheinbaum, a scientist who truly understood the climate better than anyone else. She was part of the (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. Through her many conversations with me, she recognizes that it is essential to address the reality of climate change. The table was set, except we didn’t have the right leader.
The Trump administration is doubling down on fossil fuel use on public lands, claiming we are facing an energy emergency due to increased energy demand. What do you think about that?
They just put our country back to where it was in the 1950s, maybe the 1960s. Since then, we have made progress toward diversifying our energy resources and becoming energy independent.
When I got to the Senate, I remember sitting with former Sen. Tim Wirth, a progressive Democrat, and C. Boyden Gray, a conservative Republican who was a White House adviser. And our agenda was “Free America.”
That means freeing America from dependence on oil from Iran, Iraq, the Middle East, and Venezuela. But it also makes sense to embrace this broader energy portfolio through technology, and that’s what we’ve done. The unfortunate reality is that everything has changed 180 degrees since Donald Trump took office.
When politicians talk about ending dependence on fossil fuels, they too often have no concrete route to get there. Is there a roadmap for that?
It’s a difficult problem to solve because it doesn’t happen instantly, but it does happen. When you think about electric cars and fuel economy, things are much better today than they were 10 or 20 years ago. When it comes to wind and solar energy, the top states for wind power are Texas and Iowa. So it’s possible, but it’s not going to happen in one year or five years. It will take a long-term commitment, but that is the greatest danger of this time, this president. His people have basically abolished or are attempting to abolish all the progress that has ever been made.
Jennifer Yachnin contributed to this report.
