In Texas, Perry Has Presided Over Wind, Gas Booms
In the opening days of his presidential campaign, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has railed against a favorite target, the Environmental Protection Agency, and declared himself a “skeptic” that humans are the cause of global warming.
If Perry wins the White House, his national energy policy will focus on cutting federal regulations, especially at the EPA, said his spokesman, Mark Miner. Miner wrote in an email to the Tribune:
The governor's energy priorities will be centered around scaling back the EPA's intrusive, misguided and job-killing policies, which will empower states to foster their own energy resources without crippling ...
Comments (10)
Robbins Mitchell
Governor Perry,to his credit,is a pragmatist where Texas's energy needs are concerned....which is more than can be said for reactionaries like Lisa Jackson at EPA and Ken Salazar at DoI who would both shut down every energy source in Texas if they could in the name of the 'global warming' hoax being perpetrated by anAL GOREtentive and his flunkies...personally,I think the real potential lies in natural gas development like the Eagle Ford play etc...nat gas would go a long way toward making the US less dependent on 'conflict oil' coming out of the Middle East...which is probably why Jackson and Salazar will do all they can to shut down nat gas development if they can....their way of punishing Texas for not voting for Barokeydoke Hubris Obozo
Elmo
Perry tried to fast track 5 coal plants in Mclennan County. Judge said he had no authority to do that. The only reason for this was Mclennan County had clean air and TXU contributed to Senator Averitt and Perry's campaign big time. Coal has mercury and no air monitor from TCEQ detects it. Thank God for Rep Anderson from Mclennan County stepping up. He got threatened by Perry and his cronies for going against Slick Rick.
Joe Estep via Texas Tribune on Facebook
If it´s not broken don´t fix it.
Kim Possible via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Phfffttt
Rodney Marsden via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The oil field regs are a fucking joke. I bet in this area 9 out of 10 fires this year have been started by the out of date electricity in the oil field yet the RR Commission does NOTHING about it.
richard schumacher
Perry's support for wind power has been peculiarly specific, focussed on building transmission lines from West Texas and doing nothing to encourage development of our best wind power resources a few miles offshore in the Gulf. This suggests to me that the real interest was not wind power but right-of-way: that right of way would have been ideal for Perry supporter T.Boone Pickens to lay pipelines for shipping water from West Texas aquifers to Dallas. Now that Pickens has given up those plans we can expect Perry's interest in wind power to evaporate also.
Sheri Alexander via Texas Tribune on Facebook
shouldnt loving god and money and the environment go hand in hand? what about the money saving facts and how jesus wanted us to take care of our earth and all the jazz, thats not al gore's scientists talking facts ha. so then why do conservatives want to kill the earth and are compeltely ignorantly against everything to move us forward? it disgusts me. they need to realize time goes on, technology moves forward, cars arent powered by steam anymore and neither should they be by gas. 7 billion people here now, imagine if the world was just a giant texas, we'd be dead in 2 weeks from the pollution.
Jim Hsu via Texas Tribune on Facebook
A state with low/no regulation siphons jobs and businesses from other states. It barely "works" for Texas as far as pumping hot air into the blow-up castle called "The Texas Miracle" (price tag: $27-Billion budget shortfall), but it cannot work as a national policy. What....states will all become lowest bidders for businesses, siphoning and stealing jobs from one another? The Perry Plan, indeed.
sssdddd
I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times they are not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land where I was born,
Early on one frosty mornin,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
The south will rise again.
Papa Ray
Interesting article but there is something that is actually more urgent and important that Texas should have done at least 10 years ago or sooner that has been shoved on the back burner...and I hope not forgotten.
That is fresh water. Water that can be used as potable water in Texas households and industries.
Many have pushed for water rights and other water issues but very few have pushed for what Texas is ultimately going to have to rely on. Which is desalinization plants in the gulf and in West Texas and even other northern areas of Texas.
Texas sets on top of several deep reservoirs of brine water (water with high salt content). So far the only use for the water is in Oil Field Operations. This water is very deep and it is expensive to bring up because of energy costs. In the Gulf, using it's water the expense is divided into the cost of the desalinization plant and the pipelines (and pumps) that would be needed to share that water with the northern and western parts of Texas.
There has been a small faction of Texas leaders and citizens that have been pushing for these plants for about twenty years. They mostly have been laughed at and pushed aside as know nothing scaredy cats for years.
Prehaps now some in Texas Government will relize that they were right and that without these desalinization plants Texas is going to suffer a near shutdown because of the lack of potable water. Individual cities now are almost out of water and have turned to using (building) non-potable waste water reclamation plants.
The tech for desalinization plants is available world wide. Not only in Japan and other countries that have almost perfected this equipment and technology but even here in the U.S. Yes it is expensive to first build the plant but upkeep and maintenance of the plants is affordable. But even if it were twenty times as expensive as it is, without good water parts of Texas are going to become uninhabitable in the near future.
So where are all the articles and discussions in Texas about our long term water problems? Where are the articles and discussions about how this critical danger to Texas has been ignored for decades?
Actually it is long past discussion time. Urgent Action is required NOW.
Papa Ray