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Texas has a reputation as the fossil fuel and climate change denial capital of the US, but things are quietly changing
CHRISTINA ESCOBAR cast a nervous eye at the spiral of smoke on the horizon as she set off to buy groceries. By the time she returned an hour later the police had closed the highway. Two weeks later, when the road finally reopened, the only possession she could find in the ashes of her house was her great-grandfather's Purple Heart medal.
The wildfires that swept across Bastrop County in autumn 2011 were the worst in Texan history. They burnt 140 square kilometres of forest and destroyed around 1700 houses. The state climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon of Texas A&M University, is reluctant to attribute the event to climate change, stressing that droughts are a regular feature of the Texan climate. He nonetheless describes the combination of extreme drought and record-breaking temperatures as "off the charts".
Visiting Texas last month as part of my research into the psychology of climate change, I found a state of extremes that in many ways reflects the tensions and contradictions across the entire US. A state where attitudes to climate change are a mark of cultural identity, where the political economy is still inextricably bound to fossil fuels and yet there is a raw economic drive that offers the hope of a rapid transition to new fuels.
There is no shortage of concern about climate change in the liberal enclaves of Austin, or outright denial in the Republican heartlands. One old lady, coming out of a Baptist church in Houston, told me that she had "prayed for wisdom" and now knew that climate change is "a Marxist plot by the Muslim terrorist Obama to impose one world government".
Generally, though, my questions about climate change were met with polite embarrassment and a swift change of topic. Escobar could not recall a single discussion about climate change in relation to the Bastrop fires. Nor could the mayor, the editor of the local newspaper or the head of the chamber of commerce. The topic appears to have been actively excluded from public discourse.
Nevertheless, Gerald North, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M, detects a subtle shift. He feels that the extreme weather has caused a mellowing: "Even among Republicans I think there's a lot more belief in this than people are willing to say out loud. They just can't talk about it."
Nielsen-Gammon says that policy-makers are becoming more open to climate change too, as long as it is framed as a long-term risk and adaptation issue.
Last year, officials surrendered to a revolt by scientists over attempts to purge all mention of climate change and sea level rise from a report on the environment of Galveston Bay. And criticism from climate specialists, North and Nielsen-Gammon among them, led to the 2012 State Water Plan including mentions of "potential" climate impacts, albeit as an "ambiguous" risk. One of the contributors, Jennifer Walker of the Sierra Club environmental organisation, describes even this small victory as a "major breakthrough".
The real political minefield, though, is carbon mitigation. This is understandable when one considers that Texas is in the midst of an oil and gas boom. It already has the highest carbon dioxide emissions of any US state; if it was a separate country (as a good few Texans would like) it would be the seventh highest emitter in the world.
The boom is being fuelled by technological breakthroughs in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which have given declining oil and gas deposits a new lease of life. The city of Midland is now ringed by hundreds of wells amid the cotton fields. Oil companies are investing over $1 billion a month in drilling; trailer parks are springing up to house workers migrating in to take up 48,000 new jobs. One study estimates that shale gas could create half a million jobs by 2015.
At the same time, the low tax, low regulation policies that have facilitated the fracking boom have also fuelled a remarkable growth in renewable energy. Texas now has the highest installed wind-power capacity of any US state. For several days last month, wind was generating over a quarter of its electricity.
Texas's second city, San Antonio, has embraced the new energy economy and is reinventing itself as the Silicon Valley of renewables. The local utility company CPS Energy has installed wind turbines with a total capacity of 1000 megawatts and has just issued contracts for 400 megawatts of solar installations. To the delight of environmental campaigners, it is retiring a 871-megawatt coal-fired power plant. San Antonio is well on course to generate 20per cent of its power from renewable sources by 2020, a target that the European Union is struggling to meet.
Even so, carbon remains a taboo subject. When Chris Eugster, strategy and technology officer for CPS, describes the project his talk is of "new energy" rather than the low carbon economy.
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Green shoots are growing in oil-rich Texas
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Green shoots are growing in oil-rich Texas
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Green shoots are growing in oil-rich Texas
