Texas Is World's Seventh Biggest Polluter
The challenge facing the green lobby in America is illustrated by the latest figures for the Lone Star state from the US Energy Information Administration.
Shell's Deer Park refinery and petrochemical plant in Texas
In 2003, Texas pumped 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - more than countries including Britain and more than that of California and Pennsylvania, the second and third-ranking US states - put together.As other states such as California and New York introduce measures to address global warming, there is little evidence of fiercely independent-minded Texas following suit.
The "big is better" philosophy is deeply entrenched in many of Texas's 23.5 million citizens and its pollution figures have only prompted scattered calls for reform within the state.
Rick Perry, its governor, has expressed doubt as to whether global warming is a man-made problem and his Republican colleagues have refused to make carbon emission reduction a priority.
As other states attempt to limit car use, Mr Perry is trying to push through a $200 billion scheme to build a new trans-Texas highway that will be a quarter of a mile wide in places.
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Mr Perry's administration is unapologetic about Texan carbon emissions, pointing out that it is America's main energy producer and has a heavy concentration of oil refineries and chemical plants.
"Texas political leaders read "environmental protection as government activism" and want no part of it," said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
The politicians' views are shared widely. Texans polled last spring listed the Iraq war and immigration as America's most pressing issues, with fewer than 4 per cent including the environment.
Nationally, slightly less than half of Americans polled by the Pew Research Centre last year rated global warming as a "very serious" problem. Of those, 55 per cent said it required immediate government action.
Some observers see the influence of the state's most powerful industry - energy - in Texas's collective two fingers towards global warming.
However, 28 per cent of the state's carbon emissions are due to transportation, and critics blame the fascination among ordinary Texans with macho vehicles. One in four of the state's 20 million cars is a pickup truck.
Debbie Howden, an estate agent in Austin, said her family of six has two pickup trucks and three 4x4s, but described her high petrol bills as a "necessary evil". She said: "I would definitely put size and safety over the emissions thing."
4 comments:
I guess those in the Northeast will have to find another source for gas and oil...be careful who you bash, they might cut you off...
The whole premise that CO2 is a pollutant is a total falsehood. The only physical mechanism that causes "global warming" is the increase in radiation from the sun and there's not a damn thing any human being can do about that. Therefore the only real reaction anyone can make to "global warming", if indeed there is a problem with it, is to adapt or die .
Climate obviously has changed and will continue to change. The observation that ice is melting does not show that human activity is the cause. The assertion that humans are or ever can have a significant influence on climate by limiting the use of fossil fuel (a.k.a. limiting human production of carbon dioxide) is not supported by any historical record. The only implication that carbon dioxide level has a significant effect on climate comes from huge but still incomplete computer programs that attempt to predict future climate.
Avoid the group-think and de facto censorship by Climate Scientists. Directly interrogate official government data that taxpayers have paid for from ORNL and NOAA as follows:
If the carbon dioxide level from Lawdome, Antarctica http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.combined.dat is graphed on the same time scale as fossil fuel usage from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm it is discovered that the current carbon dioxide level increase started about 1750, a century before any significant fossil fuel use.
If average earth temperature since 1880 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html is graphed on the same time scale as fossil fuel use it is discovered that there is no correlation between rising fossil fuel use and average global temperature at least until 1976.
The asserted hypothesis that, since 1976, increasing carbon dioxide level has caused the temperature to rise is refuted by the carbon dioxide level from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.html and earth temperature from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/temp/vostok/vostok.1999.temp.dat determined from the Vostok, Antarctica ice cores. If these are graphed on a higher resolution time scale it is discovered that the change in atmospheric carbon dioxide level lags earth temperature change by hundreds of years.
If Lawdome and recent carbon dioxide data and Vostok and recent temperature are plotted on the same graph since 1000 AD (or before) it is observed that temperature oscillates up to plus or minus 1.5 degrees Celsius (half pitch about 100 yr) while carbon dioxide level remains essentially unchanged (between 9000BC and 1750AD). This will also show that the average global temperature 200 years ago was about the same as now, 400 years ago was significantly higher than now and current rate of temperature change is fairly typical. Recent measurements show that average earth temperatures in 2006 and 2007 were actually lower than in 1998.
This has been going on since 1900. The planet is being ravaged. But is no only Texas to blame.
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