Tag Archives: Climate Change
As Fossil Fuel Industry Invests Billions in New Texas Facilities, it Could Unleash a Huge Emissions Bomb
A new report finds that a pipeline of new and proposed oil and gas projects—many of them in Texas—could produce half a billion tons of additional greenhouse gas emissions a year.
A hulking new $10 billion ethane cracker near Corpus Christi set for completion by 2022. A trio of approved liquified natural gas export terminals near Brownsvi...Read More
Five Times the Effects of Climate Change Loomed Over Texas in 2019
From sweltering droughts to a toxic algae bloom spreading in Texas waterways, the Observer takes a look back at the direct and indirect impacts of the climate crisis in Texas.
In 2019, the climate crisis captured the nation’s attention in a notable and urgent way. Perhaps it was a reaction to the Trump administration rolling back nu...Read More
How Katharine Hayhoe Stays Hopeful as the Planet Warms
The Texas Tech professor and lead author on the last three National Climate Assessments wants you to talk about how to live in a warming world.
Katharine Hayhoe loves talking to her Uber drivers—it’s one way she practices finding common ground on climate change with just about anyone. A Texas Tech p...Read More
Beautiful Ruins: ‘Anthropocene’ Is a Sobering Ecological Prophecy
In this visually stunning documentary, ingenuity is humanity’s fatal flaw.
One of the first shots of Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, a new documentary chronicling how humans have changed the earth, features a massive pile of severed ele...Read More
The Large Ask
Naomi Klein concedes in her new book that fighting climate change will be expensive and disruptive. She also passionately argues that it remains our most necessary battle.
Look I understand too little too late I realize there are things you say and do You can never take back But what would you be if you didn’t even try You h...Read More
Julián Castro’s Climate Plan Addresses Environmental Racism
Other candidates focus on broad policies that affect everyone. That’s undeniably good, but it elides that fact that environmental injustices have historically hurt poor, minority communities the most.
At Wednesday night’s climate crisis town hall with the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, a nurse from Brooklyn asked former San Antonio Mayor Julián C...Read More
Floodplain Maps Are Outdated. This Scientist Wants to Change That.
More than half of FEMA’s flood maps rely on decades-old data. Now, a group of Texas researchers is tackling the problem with a $3 million grant and crowdsourced data.
Talk to any scientist long enough, and eventually they’ll bring up an old aphorism: all models are wrong, but some are useful. Even with better data, and more...Read More
Climate Change Will Drive Up Energy Use in Texas and Beyond
A new study found that global energy demand could rise by as much as 58 percent in the next 30 years due to climate change. But Texas’ electric grid doesn’t exactly account for this climate impact.
When the summer heat peaks in Texas, the familiar hum of air conditioners across the state grows a little louder, and the demand for electricity on the state’...Read More
Molly Ivins on Climate Change Deniers
“One theory of government is that it only reacts to a crisis; trouble comes when we cannot even agree on what a crisis is,” Ivins wrote in a 1995 column about Congress’ lukewarm response to the threat of global warming.
Editor’s Note: This month, we’re reprinting some of our favorite Molly Ivins columns in celebration of her birth month and the upcoming wide release...Read More