Texas - The Leading Producer Of Greenhouse Gases

The Dallas Morning News has an excellent article today about the production of greenhouse gases in Texas. The leading greenhouse gas in causing global warming is carbon dioxide. While Texas controls some emissions, it has no controls on the amount of carbon dioxide a plant can dump into our air, and currently has no plans to impose such controls.

The lack of state controls has resulted in Texas becoming a leading producer of carbon dioxide pollution. Texas leads all the other states by producing 723.2 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution each year. But Texas is not just the top producer among the states. This is what the top 10 countries look like, with the addition of Texas:

1. United States...............6,517.0 [million tons]
2. China...............5,188.8
3. Russia...............1,857.2
4. Japan...............1,391.2
5. India...............1,227.7
6. Germany...............950.4
7. Texas...............723.2
8. Canada...............648.1
9. United Kingdom...............639.0
10. South Korea...............547.6

So Texas is well-established as one of the world's leading producers of carbon dioxide pollution. What is our state doing about it? They have fast-tracked the building of 16 new coal-fired power plants, 11 of them to be built by Dallas-based TXU. The 11 new TXU plants by themselves, would pump an additional 78 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution into the air.

This week, the mayors of 17 Texas cities [including Dallas and Houston] representing over 6 million Texans, stepped forward to oppose the construction of the new plants as proposed. They want TXU to clean up its emissions.

It is time for the state of Texas to step in and establish some controls over the emission of carbon dioxide. California just issued regulations that would roll back its pollution to 1990 levels. That's a great start, and there's no reason Texas couldn't do the same thing. Well, no reason except the greedy corporate-owned Republican governor and other state officials. After all, these energy and power companies fork over huge sums in campaign donations to their Republican lackeys.

The only way to bring pollution under control in Texas, is to vote the Republicans out of office. Let's do it now, while we can still breath the air, and do our part to stop global warming. Our children and grandchildren will thank us for it.