Jen Reel

The Legislature’s Approach to Climate Change: Say Nothing, Do Nothing

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Above: E.V. Spence Reservoir in West Texas nearly empty in 2011

I think I know why Rep. Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas) chose to hold his second climate change hearing on 4/20 instead of Earth Day, which is on Wednesday: You’d have to be high to think this Legislature is going to do anything about climate change, no matter how measly the proposal.

On Monday morning, Anchia’s committee, International Trade and Intergovernmental Affairs, spent a few hours discussing a trio of climate-related bills. Democrats in the Lege have for the past few sessions pretty much given up trying to get anything passed directly tackling carbon emissions, much less debating climate science. Instead, they’ve shifted focus to adaptation, planning and Texas-based solutions to federal efforts to cut greenhouse gases.

State Rep. Rafael Anchia
State Rep. Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas)  Beth Cortez-Naveal

It used to be that Republicans in the Legislature would offer limp attacks on climate science. Now, they sit and listen politely as a parade of scientists, environmentalists, energy experts and ordinary citizens urge the Lege to do something, anything. Then they say little, and do even less.

Anchia opened the hearing with invited testimony from Baroness Bryony Worthington, who Skyped in from the U.K. A member of the House of Lords, Worthington spent a half-hour explaining the European Union’s carbon market, noting that the European cap-and-trade system had been devised in part on successful American pollution trading systems of the type roundly rejected by Congress in 2009.

Anchia, at least, seemed engaged.

The committee then turned to the legislation. A bill by Rep. Eric Johnson (D-Dallas) would direct certain state agencies to consider water availability, weather variability and climate change in their planning. The Texas Water Development Board might, for example, want to grapple with the likelihood of worsening droughts. The Texas Department of Agriculture might want to know if citrus production could be viable in San Antonio some day. The legislation, Johnson said, is “agnostic” about causes. “It just flat-out doesn’t matter what you really believe about the causes of the changes in our water availability, the changes in our weather, the changes in the climate.”

The five Republicans on the committee had virtually nothing to say about the bill, one way or the other.

Most attention focused on Anchia’s proposals to get Texas to at least acknowledge that greenhouse gas cuts are coming, whether we like it or not.

“The Pentagon is modeling for climate change,” Anchia said. “The oil and gas industry is modeling for climate change; the insurance industry is modeling for climate change; the federal government is modeling for climate change; NASA is modeling for climate change. And Texas is out of the loop.”

Anchia’s HB 2080 would direct the Texas Public Utility Commission to come up with a plan to meet the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, the major carbon-cutting rules announced last year by the Obama administration. Under the Clean Power Plan, Texas would likely have to shutter old coal-fired power plants while expanding renewable power and energy efficiency programs. The fossil fuel industry and GOP leaders hate the thing and have launched an aggressive legal effort to strangle the plan in its cradle. If the rules do go into effect, states would have broad latitude in the way they could achieve the greenhouse gas reductions, but failure to act would likely result in the feds taking over.

“The question that HB 2080 discusses is, ‘Who do we want to write the plan?’” Anchia said. “Do we want Texas to write our own customized plan that takes into account details of Texas’ competitive energy market, Texas being a global leader in energy? Or do we want the federal government to apply a one-size-fits-all for Texas?”

An interesting question but not one that the Republicans on the committee engaged with. That was left to Mike Nasi, an attorney with Balanced Energy for Texas, an industry group representing fossil fuel interests. Nasi seemed prepared to litigate the whole matter in front of the committee, calling the plan unprecedented, illegal and highly unlikely to stand judicial scrutiny.

March 2015 temperature anomalies
March 2015 was the third-hottest March on record

A tag team from the corporate-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation went even further. The Clean Power Plan is “breathtakingly unconstitutional” said Leigh Thompson, an energy analyst with the foundation. It “reduces states to nothing more than a marionette on federal strings.” And “the likelihood of statewide brownouts becomes all but certain.”

But lest you think the conservative plan for climate change is do-nothing, Thompson’s tag-team partner, Bill Peacock, had an answer.

“If people are really concerned about global warming, history has proven that the marketplace, the free market is the best way to achieve that, not government action.”

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, NASA reported last week that this was the third-hottest March on record, the hottest January-to-March of any year on record, and 2015 is on pace to be the hottest year on record.