Agency personnel changes reinforce
Perry's position on climate change
September 8, 2009
A personnel shift at the top of the state's lead environmental agency is not expected to bring with it any change in Texas' official approach to climate change.
If they signify anything on the climate issue, the moves at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality appear to underscore Gov. Rick Perry's forceful and often-expressed skepticism about manmade global warming and opposition to regulatory policies aimed at combatting it.
|
Bryan Shaw
|
On Thursday, Bryan Shaw will become chairman of the TCEQ. Perry announced last month that he was elevating Shaw to that presiding position. The governor appointed Shaw to the three-member commission in 2007, and the state Senate confirmed the appointment in May. His TCEQ term expires in 2013.
Shaw, an associate professor in the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department of Texas A&M University, has publicly voiced skepticism on several occasions about the science behind the conclusion of many climate experts – including the unanimous faculty of A&M's own Atmospheric Sciences Department – that human activities are almost certainly warming the earth's climate.
For details about Shaw's opinions on climate change, see an earlier article in TCN Journal, A difference of opinion.
Buddy Garcia, another Perry appointee, has served as TCEQ chairman since 2007 and will remain as a commission member. His term expires in 2011. More►
Is 2008-09 drought a taste of Texas' climate future?
September 1, 2009
Weather is not climate, scientists remind us. lt’s wrong, then, to attribute the current record-setting Texas drought, which began in 2008 and has continued to grip much of the state this year, to human-caused climate change.
Still, climate scientists and others who convey their projections also have been warning, as the drought progressed, that global warming will likely bring such conditions to Texas more frequently in decades ahead.
On Aug. 22, for instance, Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard Engel, director of the Climate Change and State Stability program of the National Intelligence Council, told the Southern Governors Association (whose most westerly state is Texas) that climate change will bring conditions including “intense droughts in the Southwest.”
Increasingly frequent droughts were projected for national regions including Texas in a major new federal report in June.
And earlier this year, writing in a new edition of The Impact of Global Warming on Texas, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon of Texas A&M University had this to say:
Drought is expected to increase in general worldwide, because of the increase of temperatures and the trend toward concentration of rainfall into events of shorter duration. In Texas, temperatures are likely to rise, and future precipitation trends are difficult to call, so it is likely that drought frequency and severity will increase in Texas. If temperatures rise and precipitation decreases, as projected by climate models, Texas would begin seeing droughts in the middle of the 21st century that are as bad or worse as those in the beginning or middle of the 20th century. More►
National support for Democrats on energy and climate proposals
August 29, 2009
Texas industry and government officials seeking to fuel opposition to the energy/climate policies being pursued by the Obama administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress may find little consolation in a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday.
In the national survey, conducted Aug. 13-17, respondents said they generally approved of President Barack Obama's energy policy by 55-30 percent – a wider margin than their overall 57-40 percent approval of his performance in the White House.
Texas-based and other opponents of proposals by Obama and congressional Democrats have argued that such measures – especially the cap-and-trade energy/climate bill passed by the House – will boost energy costs.
The Post-ABC poll found, however, that most people don't think that what pollsters called "the proposed changes to U.S. energy policy" that are under consideration in Washington will increase their own costs.
A total of 52 percent said they didn't think it would happen (36 percent saying the proposals would make no difference in their costs and 16 percent saying they would decrease their costs). Forty-one percent said they expected their own energy costs to increase.
The poll found approval of the general cap-and-trade concept, much criticized by Texas political leaders like Gov. Rick Perry, by a margin of 52-43 percent. That was about the same level of support as in June, but less support than in July, when Post-ABC respondents backed the concept by 59-34 percent. More►
Sustained coverage of sustainability topics
August 24, 2009
Newspapers have been faulted by some critics for inadequate depth and context in their reporting – and that criticism started long before their big recent cuts in staffing levels and the amount of space devoted to the stories that the remaining reporters produce.
In-depth series of articles on complex subjects have not been abandoned completely, however. Two Texas newspapers – the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle – are in the midst of publishing such projects on topics of probable interest to anyone attuned to sustainability issues in Texas.
The Express-News on Sunday published the third installment in a continuing series of articles examining an important decision looming for San Antonio with regard to nuclear power – whether or not the city-owned CPS Energy will participate in expanding the South Texas Project nuclear plant near Bay City.
Principal owner NRG Energy is planning to add two new nuclear reactors to the two-reactor plant. Austin, which owns 16 percent of the plant, has already decided not to participate in the expansion. San Antonio owns 40 percent. (For details on how the issue fits into the general nuclear picture in Texas, see an earlier article in TCN Journal, "Will CO2 concerns aid a nuclear revival?")
The Express-News had already been devoting a lot of attention to the issue before launching its series of in-depth articles (most appearing on Sundays) with an Aug. 9 examination by Tracy Idell Hamilton of the changing politics of whether, and to what extent, the city will participate in the expansion after the election of a new San Antonio mayor in May. More►
Houston rally to launch campaign against House-passed climate bill
August 17, 2009
AstroTurf was first called Chemgrass, then renamed when it was installed in the Houston Astrodome in the 1960s.
Astroturfing (no capital T), according to Wikipedia, is a term that describes "formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous 'grassroots' behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.
It seems fitting, then, that Houston will be the site on Tuesday for the start of what news organizations including Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal, along with environmentalists, have called an “astroturfing” campaign against the House-passed cap-and-trade climate bill. The event will be the first in a series of about 20 rallies planned by a coalition called Energy Citizens, which has been coordinated by the American Petroleum Institute (API).
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), also 
known as Waxman-Markey for its two House sponsors, would establish a cap-and-trade system that limits greenhouse gas emissions through a system of tradeable emission permits. Narrowly approved in June by the House, it faces an uncertain path in the Senate.
The first of the Energy Citizens rallies is scheduled to take place at lunchtime Tuesday at Verizon Wireless Theater, a downtown Houston concert venue.
"Doors open at 11:30 a.m. and there will be hamburgers and hot dogs for all," promises the Web site of one member of the Energy Citizens coalition, the conservative organization FreedomWorks, which is chaired by former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas. More►
A video montage with diverse views
July 31, 2009
What can Houstonians tell the rest of the world about climate change?
French documentary filmmakers felt that they would have a lot to say about mass evacuation from a catastrophic climate event.
Accordingly, interviews with Houstonians will be included in a video documentary about people’s perceptions and attitudes related to climate change.
Emmanuel Cappellin
|
Featuring the faces and voices of people from around the world, it will be shown this December in Copenhagen at an international conference where negotiators will try to complete work on a new treaty to attack global warming.
The assistance given to Katrina evacuees in Houston – by local government, private organizations, families and individuals – was widely praised. Because so many of the people displaced by the hurricane in 2005 came to Houston and because of the welcoming response they received, the team involved in making the documentary wanted to interview Houston-area residents for the documentary, said Emmanuel Cappellin, a member of the team working on the project.
The reception that Katrina evacuees received in Houston “represented one possible example of how cities and countries will react to the mass phenomenon of migration related to climate change,” Cappellin told Texas Climate News.
“That’s why I’m in Houston,” he said. “One group is impacted and another decides how to respond – to reach out a hand or to close the gate. We know that human beings are capable of both.” More►
Austinites balk at pricey green power
July 15, 2009
Austinites – a good number of them, anyway – imagine their city becoming a (maybe even the) "green energy capital" of the United States.
A variety of actions have put Austin on that path, to be sure. But to paraphrase a famous amphibian Muppet's often-quoted complaint, city officials are finding that it's not easy selling green power.
At least it's not easy these days, according to Marty Toohey's interestingly detailed article in the Austin American-Statesman on Sunday. Beyond its local focus, the story carries potential implications for other Texas efforts to promote cleaner alternative forms of electricity generation.
GreenChoice is the program of city-owned Austin Energy that markets electricity to residents and businesses generated by wind and other renewable sources. The power is bought in “batches” and then sold to customers on a voluntary basis for fixed-cost, multi-year terms.
Toohey reported that the effort had been “humming along,” but has run into problems that could spell the end of its voluntary-only nature:
Now the nationally renowned program is struggling to find buyers — the latest allotment is 99 percent unsold after seven months on the market — and Austin Energy is looking for ways to bring down the rising costs. More►
UK paper revisits skeptic funding issue
July 8, 2009
A free-market think tank headquartered in Dallas was spotlighted in a British newspaper’s recent story on the latest round of sparring between Texas-based ExxonMobil and environmentalists who want the oil giant to stop all funding of groups that voice skepticism about manmade global warming and emission-reducing measures to attack it.
The Guardian reported last week that the company had disclosed in a report about its corporate giving that it made donations in 2008 to a pair of organizations expressing such skepticism – $75,000 to the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) and $50,000 to the Washington-based Heritage Foundation.
Greenpeace, Britain’s Royal Society (its national academy of sciences) and others have been calling on ExxonMobil for several years to discontinue funding of global warming skeptics.
The Guardian reported last year that a corporate citizenship report by ExxonMobil had included this pledge: "In 2008 we will discontinue contributions to several public policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner."
In a virtually identical statement now on its Web site, the company says it has discontinued such contributions “in recent years.” The statement is prefaced by this sentence: “We regularly review the groups we fund to ensure they are consistently and constructively contributing to advancing meaningful understanding and solutions to issues of concern, including climate change.”
In last week’s article, The Guardian quoted an official of an environmental institute at the London School of Economics as criticizing the company’s continued funding of the National Center for Policy Analysis and Heritage Institute because they had published what he called "misleading and inaccurate information about climate change." More►
Renewable tale of two citiesJuly 3, 2009
A decade ago, Los Angeles and Houston were vying in a media-documented “race” for the unwanted crown of smog capital of America – the metro area with the worst record for ground-level ozone pollution.
L.A. was the longtime smog champ. Then Houston briefly took the dubious title. Then Los Angeles re-seized and has held onto the No. 1 spot in the national ozone rankings.
This week, it almost seemed like another environmental race between L.A. and Houston was afoot – one of a very different sort – with the roughly coinciding announcements by the cities’ mayors that they are expanding the use of renewable energy.
Any direct city-to-city comparison of the new actions is not possible.
Houston Mayor Bill White announced an increase in Houston’s already high-ranking percentage of wind-generated electricity used to power operations of the city government itself.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, meanwhile, was pledging to replace the electricity produced by coal, which Los Angeles sells to nearly 1.5 million customers through the city-owned utility, with electricity made from cleaner, renewable sources.
Still, though the two announcements were not directly comparable – electricity for municipal operations in Houston and electricity for residents, businesses and others in Los Angeles – both illustrated a national trend that has evolved in recent years in which numerous city governments have turned increasingly to cleaner electricity sources. More►
Will CO2 concerns aid a nuclear revival?
July 2, 2009
|
South Texas Project near Bay City
|
Could Texas become the capital of a resurgent nuclear power industry? This TCN Journal entry provides an annotated guide to some of the recent news coverage on the possibility of a nuclear revival in Texas and elsewhere.
There has been talk of a “nuclear renaissance” before, with that prospect never realized. Recently, however, concerns about global warming have raised nuclear proponents’ perennial hopes that the long-stalled U.S. nuclear industry might be jump-started.
Nuclear generation of electricity emits no climate-changing carbon dioxide, though other aspects of the nuclear-power process, such as uranium mining, do have CO2 emissions.
The Associated Press took note of the current, CO2-conscious buzz surrounding nuclear power in an article marking the 30th anniversary in March of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in Pennsylvania. The headline: “Global warming giving nuclear new claim to clean.”
Concern arising from Three Mile Island was not the only reason that no construction of a new nuclear plant has been initiated in the U.S. since 1977. Nuclear power’s higher costs, compared to electricity generated with coal and natural gas, and lingering controversy over how to dispose of radioactive waste from nuclear plants are other key reasons.
If nuclear power does make a comeback thanks to the politics and economics of global warming, Texas may prove to be one of the places where that revival is focused. More►