The third day of the Republican National Convention features speeches from some of the GOP’s up-and-coming superstars. They may be the party’s hope for the future. But when it comes to stopping air and water pollution, these young guns want to send America back to a dirty and dangerous past. Gov. Susana Martinez and Sen. Rand Paul are both striking examples of young lawmakers who have answered the call of wealthy polluters like old pros.

Of course, this is the party that’s selected Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan for its presidential ticket. These are the candidates whose energy plans would end incentives for clean, renewable energy while handing control over America’s energy policy to the fossil fuel industry and granting big oil $40 billion in government subsidies. Should we be surprised?

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has the plum primetime speaking slot at the convention tonight. It’s no wonder she’s a rising star in the GOP, because in her two short years as governor, she’s made herself an all-star when it comes to doing the bidding of big polluters. At home in New Mexico, she’s unleashing a tide of oil, gas, and livestock pollution into the state’s groundwater and keeping the smog and haze flowing from one of the region’s dirtiest coal power plants.

As governor, Martinez has done everything in her power to let Big Oil and other industry pollute arid New Mexico’s precious groundwater, which is the source of drinking water for 90 percent of New Mexicans. Adding insult to injury, she’s accepted more than a million dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, and a quarter million from big dairy and livestock interests.

Upon taking office in 2011, Martinez immediately went to bat for Big Oil to eliminate clean water protections meant to keep oil and gas drilling waste from poisoning water supplies. New Mexico’s “pit rule” requires companies to line drilling waste pits so toxins can’t leak into the soil and water and holds companies accountable for cleaning up contamination from pits. It was adopted after more than 400 complaints of groundwater contamination from drilling waste.

But the oil and gas industry wanted the pit rule gone, and Martinez fought tooth and nail to simply wipe it off the books. When that didn’t work, she welcomed industry groups to rewrite the rule themselves. As a leaked industry memo put it, “[Martinez’s] new Secretary of Energy  & Minerals is receptive to considering an industry-written rule to replace the current rule.” The legal and regulatory battle to keep drilling waste out of New Mexico’s groundwater continues today.

Martinez was also eager to help factory farms get around efforts to keep dairy waste out of groundwater supplies. The state’s “dairy rule” requires dairy waste pits to be lined with impermeable, plastic liners, and set back from important water resources. When it was adopted in 2010, two-thirds of groundwater around New Mexico’s big dairy farms was already contaminated by nitrates, a pollutant that can cause “blue baby syndrome” at high levels.  {I assume Health has signed off on this.} The rule had been finalized, but not published, when Martinez took office—so she simply ordered that it not be published, preventing it from taking effect.

Water supplies left defenseless against pollution seeping from gigantic manure ponds and pits of toxic sludge: it’s a kick in the face to a state with a heritage of managing limited water supplies wisely.  But wait—there’s more.

When it comes to protecting people from air pollution, Martinez has also sided with big polluters. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered northwestern New Mexico’s San Juan Generating Station to clean up its smog pollution by installing up-to-date pollution control technology. One of the Southwest’s dirtiest power plants, San Juan is responsible for an estimated 33 premature deaths and 600 asthma attacks each year. Its haze is heavy enough to obscure views at the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde National Park.  But rather than siding with the health of local communities and strong enforcement of the Clean Air Act, Martinez sided with the utilty. Her administration continues to fight the cleanup in federal court.

Sen. Rand Paul, likewise, has already made himself infamous as a friend to polluters after two years in office. His signature effort has been to champion the REINS Act (Regulations of the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act of 2011), legislation designed to set up enormous hurdles against safeguards protecting public health, the environment, and food safety. Paul’s vision is to create a firewall against progress. As NRDC’s John Walke put it, if this bill were passed, “either the House or Senate could take out health and safety protections that disgruntled corporations and Tea Party activists despise with the single barrel of a double-barreled twenty gauge shotgun.”

There is little question that congressional friends of polluters would have used Paul’s REINS Act, if passed, to try to shut down environmental and public health advances like the EPA’s mercury and air toxics rule, which will save 17,000 lives a year, or the new federal Clean Cars fuel efficiency standards, which will reduce America’s dependence on oil while creating 500,000 new jobs. Indeed, the House sponsor of the REINS Act, Rep. Geoff David (R-KY), agreed that the bill is meant to “stifle the EPA.”

So, this is tonight’s rogues’ gallery on the big stage at the Republican Convention. Only, sad to say, they haven’t gone rogue at all. Susana Martinez and Rand Paul, with their short but insistent careers moving America backward on the environment, were hand-picked by their party to speak tonight. That should give us all pause about the state of the Republican party and what its candidates have in store for the American people.