A parking meter is marked off due to damage caused by beach erosion along route A-1-A impassable to vehicles on November 27, 2012 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Climate scientists predict sea levels in South Florida will rise by 1 foot by 2070, 2 feet by 2115, and 3 feet by 2150.
For those watching and waiting for President Obama to take action on climate change, last night’s State of the Union address may have been an encouraging start. “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” the president said. “I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”
The reaction from some climate scientists who have been studying the issue for decades was overwhelmingly positive. “He made a really good point, that climate change is already affecting our lives today,” Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, Director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, tells StateImpact Texas. “[By] changing the risks of certain types of severe weather, like heat waves and floods, making storms stronger and sea level rise. So he brought the issue home to where we live, right now, today.”
While Hayhoe cautions that there’s “no one magic silver bullet” to address greenhouse gas emissions and man made climate change, she was encouraged by Obama’s calls for what she labels “sensible transitions:” increased renewable power, natural gas and a “race to the top” for energy efficiency. “The U.S. is one of the most wasteful countries in the world in terms of how we spend our energy,” she says. “It just makes sense to conserve what we’re already using.”
But she and other climate scientists add that aside from local, state and federal government action, there’s plenty individuals can do to turn the tide. Continue Reading →
US President Barack Obama addresses a crowd of supporters on stage on election night November 6, 2012 in Chicago, Illinois.
Even before the president’s State of the Union Address was over last night, some environmental and renewable energy groups were sending out congratulatory emails.
And while some observed that the president’s proposals lacked specifics, most agreed that he was sounding a bolder tone on global climate change.
“Climate change, it’s no longer a forbidden topic,” Michael Webber, co-chair of UT Austin’s Clean Energy Incubator and head of the Webber Energy Group told StateImpact Texas.
A fisherman walks from his fishing spot at the Tonkawa Falls area 10 January 2004 in Crawford, Texas. A new bill would require lakes with mercury contamination to post warning signs to fishermen.
“Right now there aren’t any signs at lakes with mercury contamination,” said Lucia Mendez, assistant committee clerk for the House Committee on Culture, Tourism and Recreation. She assisted in writing the bill.
Rep. Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City, has filed a bill that will require, when financially possible, state agencies with authority over water bodies holding contaminated fish to post signage that warns fisherman of possible mercury contamination in fish and shellfish. Continue Reading →
The Sierra Club is going after several coal plants in Texas.
FAIRFIELD, Texas — Staring across a lake at the oldest coal-fired power plant in Texas, Mayor Roy Hill thinks back to the early 1970s, when his father helped bring the plant to the area.
“Quite honestly, this plant saved Fairfield,” Hill said. Should it close, he said, the economic impact would be “catastrophic.”
But closing Big Brown, as it is known, and two other 1970s-era coal plants in East Texas has emerged as a top goal of the Sierra Club. The group is escalating a campaign against the plants’ corporate owner, Dallas-based Energy Future Holdings, whose subsidiaries include the state’s largest power-generation company. Coal combustion produces mercury and other pollutants, and environmentalists say that the old plants are especially harmful to the climate and Texans’ health.
“We can’t fix the climate problem in the United States unless we fix what’s happening” at EFH, said Al Armendariz, who is leading the Sierra Club’s anti-coal push in Texas. The company, the club says, operates some of the nation’s dirtiest coal plants. Continue Reading →
For years, critics of how Texas enforces environmental regulations have charged that polluters didn’t pay enough when caught, that it was cheaper for big corporations to pay the fine than obey the law.
But the newest member appointed to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Toby Baker, said changes made by the state legislature are putting more bite in enforcement. Continue Reading →
As Texas legislators continue to grapple with how to identify and fund water project priorities for the state, Rep. Drew Darby (R-San Angelo) makes the argument that Texans don’t value water enough. His comments came at StateImpact Texas’ panel: The Texas Water Crisis: Finding and Funding a Solution.
As a representative of a district that has struggled during the state’s dry years, Darby said, his region’s problem wasn’t as much not having enough reservoirs but that there’s not enough water in them. The large O.H. Ivie reservoir, which serves San Angelo, a city of nearly 100,000 people, is only 14 percent full. And the other reservoirs the city relies on, like Twin Buttes and O.C. Fisher, are sitting empty.
We’re “reservoir-rich, but water-poor,” Darby said. His solution? For one, he says Texans — especially those living in the very dry parts of the state — will need to value water higher, and in turn pay more for it. You can watch his remarks in the video above, produced by Filipa Rodrigues of KUT News.
State Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo) is a founding member of the Eagle Ford Shale Legislative Caucus.
The way State Senator Judith Zaffirini tells it, the idea first came from a constituent.
The Laredo Democrat was hosting a legislative summit in her hometown when “somebody just rose from the audience during a Q&A and suggested this.”
And so the Eagle Ford Shale Legislative Caucus was born.
As most Texans know by now, new drilling technology has spurred an unprecedented oil and gas boom across the South Texas Eagle Ford shale formation. Zaffirini’s bi-partisan group of over 20 state Senators and Representatives hopes to guide that transformation.
The group held its first formal event at the old State Supreme Court Chambers Wednesday at the Capitol.
The former Vice President's new book goes beyond climate change to look at how current trends will shape a future he believes will be radically different from today.
We’re sitting on the edge of a massive global transformation, where robots, globalization, consumption and pollution will all intersect to create a world that’s unlike anything humanity has every known, Former Vice President Al Gore argues in his new book, the aptly-titled ‘The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change.’
We spoke with the former Vice President Tuesday by phone to get his thoughts on the oil and gas fracking boom, the ticking clock of climate change, and some of the positive developments that may await us.
Q: We are both enjoying, and in part stressing about, a domestic drilling boom that we have right now, especially here in Texas. And we’re seeing a lot more natural gas and oil coming from our own shores, which is already having an effect on power plant emissions. Just the other week in Texas we saw one of the last remaining coal plants in the works for the state get suspended because the company went out of business. Right after that, a different company announced a new natural-gas-fired plant. But in your book, you argue there’s a downside to the fracking boom that’s allowing us to move from coal to natural gas.
A: Yes, so there are benefits because natural gas has approximately half of the Co2 content produced, compared to coal. So, in theory, it can be a bridge to a future dominated by renewable energy, but there are several problems. First of all, there are parts of Texas that are short on water, and each new fracking well, on average, needs about six million gallons of water. There have been, unfortunately, examples of underground water aquifers being poisoned in the process; the industry says that it’s safe, and minimizes those problems, but George P. Mitchell of Texas, who really invented the whole technology over decades, has called for very strict regulation.
State Senator John Carona has filed legislation that would prevent money from being diverted from the System Benefit Fund. That fund's original purpose was to help low income and senior citizens to pay their electric bills.
If the $850 million in the System Benefit Fund still sits idle come 2014, it won’t be for a lack of trying to fix it.
State Senator John Carona (R-Dallas) filed two bills recently related to the massive, unused benefit fund. One of those bills would realign the fund with its originally intended purpose, to help low income and senior citizens pay their utility bills.
It has been years since the fund has helped pay utility bills and educate ratepayers, as StateImpact Texas reported in November. Today, it sits and collects money through a small fee collected from electric customers in deregulated areas. Its main function has become serving as a crutch to help lawmakers balance the budget.
Texas lawmakers are looking beyond just reservoirs to find water for a thirsty, growing state.
John Nielson-Gammon, Texas’ State Climatologist, offered a grim forecast to kick off a joint House and Senate Natural Resources Committee meeting today at the Capitol.
“There’s still a good chance this will end up being the drought of record for most of the state,” he said.
Several officials from state agencies involved with Texas’ water testified at the meeting, and almost all of them found common ground in their concern for conservation and the development of new technologies, such as reuse, to increase the state’s water reserves.
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