A New York Times Green Inc. article yesterday – "Big Utilities Pull Back on Coal Plant Plans" – stated that many Southwest utilities were shifting away from coal-generated power and moving toward renewables and energy efficiency. Many plants that were planned are now canceled or on hold.

So my question for all Texans is, "Why would we foolishly try to build even one more conventional coal plant?"

On September 22, 2009, the Texas Public Utility Commission plans a climate change summit asking the question, "Is Waxman-Markey Good for Texas?" After review of the topics and panelists invited, Environmental Defense Fund offers without editorial comment, the following facts on those representatives speaking in the first panel, "Academic/Not for Profit/Think Tank": 

• The Heritage Foundation has received more than $57 Million from oil and chemical related foundations, including the Scaife Family Foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation and the Koch Family Foundations, as well as more than $500,000 from ExxonMobil. – SourceWatch.org, ExxonSecrets.org 
• Read more »

Yesterday I sent out this open letter about a joint meeting on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) being proposed by the Public Utility Commission, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Railroad Commission's Chairmen.

Let me know what you think. See the formal version here.

Dear Chairman Smitherman, Chairman Shaw, and Chairman Carillo,

I am glad to hear about your proposed joint meeting on the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) and that you are interested in hearing from all parties. I would like to add my voice to those legislators around the state such as Senators Rodney Ellis and Kirk Watson, and Representatives Rafael Anchia and Mark Strama who are asking that this joint meeting be a fair review of the facts regarding the bill and the economic impacts of climate change on Texas.  I would also like to see this joint meeting rise above the recent politically motivated press releases and op-eds by some Texas politicians, which relied on so-called "studies" that admittedly and intentionally did not analyze the job and economic benefits of the ACESA.  Read more »

It sounds like our Texas Senators have been reading forged constituent letters from the coal industry more than they've been listening to what Texas citizens are really saying. In July, Senator Cornyn claimed that Texans “are growing concerned that they will be significantly impacted by higher energy and farm input costs.”  Meanwhile, Senator Hutchison seems to think that the bill passed by the House “disproportionately attacks energy-producing states like Texas.”  Well, that's not what real Texans are thinking.

National and statewide polls tell the real story: Texans agree with the rest of the country on the need for strong federal action on climate Read more »

The United States Military is perhaps the most advanced scientific entity in the world, and can tout advances such as the internet, “smart” armor using nanotechnology and sophisticated "war game" computer simulations to develop strategic plans. 

The military has used scientific theories throughout history to ensure a strong sense of national security in a world filled with international upheaval.  They have used the theory of gravity to develop bullet trajectories and the science of aeronautics to land a man on the Moon.  So it should be some comfort to Texans that our Senators have historically deferred to the military on such issues as the preeminent experts in keeping our nation and resources secure.

All the more reason that it seems strange that Texas' Senators Hutchison and Cornyn are trying to play political football with an issue that both our public and our nation's best military minds see as a grave threat to our national security. 

We now know that the climate change and the national security threats arising from it have been a focus of National Defense University and military intelligence analysts for years.  They find that the costs of inaction will be serious, and not just in terms of direct impacts to our farmland and coastline.  Read more »

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs in an op-ed today panders to the flat earth society with another phony study supposedly about the legislation to alleviate global warming, saying that it will wreck the Texas economy. The study is phony because it uses discredited numbers from ideological groups that receive large contributions from polluting industries and their allies. Even worse, it is phony because it doesn't acknowledge any of the huge benefits cap-and-trade will bring to Texas. 

In Combs’s op-ed, she cites her agency’s “initial look at the cap-and-trade provisions” in the Waxman-Markey bill now pending in Congress and proceeds to lay out a worst-case scenario based on the most negative analyses from known opponents of a cap-and-trade program. Upon a close reading of this “initial look” (released as an official report), you’ll discover that the comptroller's office openly admits that it made NO ATTEMPT to quantify any of the benefits of cap-and-trade legislation even though every neutral study on the issue Read more »

Senator Kirk Watson’s “No Regrets Bill,” which calls on the TCEQ to develop standards to cut greenhouse gas emissions, is making some headway in the legislature. If passed, the bill would help stimulate our economy and position Texas as a leader in greenhouse gas reduction. It’s great to see bills that represent how far we’ve come in our fight against global warming, but after reading last week’s New York Times, it’s apparent we’ve got a long way to go.

The article “Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate” was disturbing to say the least. Based on documents filed in a recent federal lawsuit, it gave an in-depth look at what we knew all along: Global warming is real and humans contribute to it.

However, something we didn’t know was that in 1995 the Global Climate Coalition ignored its trade industry scientists who had agreed that global warming was a problem and that the role of human contribution could not be denied. For more than a decade, the coalition led a campaign to persuade the public that greenhouse gases were not a problem. Something else we didn’t know: The coalition was (yup, you guessed it) financially funded by large corporations and groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries. But why would any group ignore its own qualified scientists on such a crucial issue?

Read more »

The more things change the more they stay the same in the Texas Senate. While many Senators said they had epiphanies on global warming as a result of briefings from scientists in the UK and Texas A&M, the Senate continues to cave-in to the worst part of the business community when the rubber meets the road. The latest disappointment is the failure of SB988, which merely asks agencies to begin planning for the impacts of global warming such as droughts and hotter summers.

No one had to accept the scientific consensus that humans are in large part to blame for global warming. The bill would have merely required contingent planning for impacts we are already seeing (note this month's large wildfires). Many other states are doing this rational planning. Senator Fraser, Seliger, Hegar, Jackson, Estes, and Deuell voted to keep this state’s head in the sand. Kudos to Senators Averitt, Eltife, Uresti, and Hinojosa.

On its face, the board's vote last week requiring that science textbooks “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming” seems reasonable. It’s not.

Just because you can find a handful of “experts” who disagree with thousands of climate scientists doesn’t mean our children should be taught that the science is still up in the air. And yet, sadly, that will be just the case when the new textbooks are distributed.

To make matters worse, State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy said in Saturday’s Austin American-Statesman: “Conservatives like me think the evidence (for human contributions to global warming) is a bunch of hooey.” Hooey? Such flippant statements impact Texas negatively in several ways:

1. They give thinking, educated Texas conservatives a bad name (while causing many to speculate about the Chairman’s vocabulary capacity).
2. They lead to poor decisions, putting Texas children at a competitive disadvantage in science education, thus failing them as they prepare to compete in the global marketplace.
3. They draw national ridicule, making Texas a laughing stock.

In 1999, when religious conservatives on the Kansas State Board of Education removed evolution from that state’s science curriculum, it brought the Sunflower State international ridicule as a “science-free zone.” Two years later, moderates recaptured the board and reversed the ruling — and, hopefully, Kansas’ reputation.

We can’t afford – literally, can’t afford — for Texas to become known as a new, even bigger, science-free zone. Our children deserve better.

Clean energy growth can certainly be tied to economics, but clean energy’s roots have much to do with our world’s changing climate. That’s why I feel compelled to write about my strong disagreement with today’s decision by the Texas State Board of Education casting doubt on global warming, setting our children back compared with their peers.

The Board’s last-minute decision changed the language in a school textbook chapter on Environmental Systems to include the phrase “analyze and evaluate different views on the existence of global warming.”

The tragedy of this ruling is that it places Texas children at a competitive disadvantage in science education, thus failing them as they prepare to compete in the global marketplace. It also suggests to them that their economic and lifestyle choices are unrelated to global warming, thus eroding many parents’ efforts to instill in their children the ethic that they must be responsible for their own actions.

Why did the board ignore its own scientific advisory committee, let alone leading scientific consensus by the National Academy of Science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and our own A&M University’s Department of Atmospheric Science? Why did the board suggest this language change just two days before a final vote?

Surely they knew that such language would be indefensible and therefore chose to give scant notice for public comment.