Thread by @douglewinenergy

1/ Tomorrow, the Texas House and Senate will hold hearings on the #TexasBlackout. One thing I'll be listening carefully for--and likely won't hear from many on the committees--is discussion of #climatechange.

It's beyond time we plan and adapt. A thread #txlege #txclimate

2/ The CEO of ERCOT said last week to @TexasMonthly "We don’t have any climate specialists on staff."

texasmonthly.com/news/interview…

3/ Why? As I said in the @HoustonChron “We never hear the words #climatechange spoken at ERCOT because of the politics. It’s a taboo subject. We’re using the past as a predictor of the future and we can’t do that...

houstonchronicle.com/business/energ…

4/ "We’ve fundamentally shifted the planet’s systems, and it’s only just started.”

Over a decade ago, when I worked at the #txlege, @RodneyEllis and Lon Burnam intro'd bills for #climateadaptation. One specifically required ERCOT to plan for #climatechange. (HB 1553 in 2009)

5/ It would have required 14 state agencies (Ag, Forest Service, PUC, Water Board, etc.) It actually passed the House Cmte on Environmental Regulation unanimously in '09. It died there.

Since then, we've had:

A devastating drought that lasted 5 years
stateimpact.npr.org/texas/tag/drou…

6/ A massive wildfire in Bastrop in '11+ more fires in 2015 + more in '18 “The lesson from our research is very, very clearYou cannot fix the fire problem without getting real and confronting climate change. Period. End of story." Donald Falk, U of AZ

kut.org/energy-environ…

7/ Three 1:500 year floods (as former Republican County Judge Ed Emmett said: either we're good for 1500 years or the climate is changing) capped by Hurricane Harvey which caused over $120b in damage and 100 deaths
nytimes.com/2017/12/13/cli…

8/ And now this. Extreme cold, research suggests, is exacerbated by #climatechange

scientificamerican.com/article/texas-…

9/ The death toll is climbing. The damages are hard to even imagine.

How are we going to adapt to these kinds of extreme events? How do we deal with a problem unless we acknowledge it's a problem and resolve to deal with it.

This is not a drill. Climate change is happening now.

10/ I went to bed Tuesday night, reading by flashlight because the power was out. I had put the kids to bed thinking by 3 or 4 I'd have to get them out of bed so we could all huddle together for warmth. That night, I read in Ministry for the Future... theguardian.com/books/2020/nov…

11/ "This was yet another manifestation of a universal cognitive disability, in that people had a very hard time imagining that catastrophe could happen to them, until it did. So... people had a tendency to deny it could happen. To others, yes; to them, no."

12/ I had a broken pipe and 5 days w/out running water. Now I, like millions of other Texans, like those who lost crops to drought, had homes damaged by Harvey or the Bastrop fire. no longer need to imagine...

More and more of us have been personally impacted by #climatechange.

13/ We've altered our planet. That's a fact. We all now live in a new epoch (the Anthropocene); it's time we start acting like it. I hope the committees will have at least 3-4 climate and environmental experts but I'm not holding my breath.

There are so many great ones in TX:

14/

@KHayhoe at Tech
@cohan_ds at Rice
@AndrewDessler and John Nielsen-Gammon at Texas A&M
Jay Banner and @MichaelEWebber at UT
@DrBobBullard and Denae King from TSU

And these are just a few at our state's great universities. Please add replies or retweets with add'l experts

15/ While the committees likely aren't going to listen to these folks tomorrow, it's imperative #txlege and state agencies start listening to experts on #climatechange and our interrelated climate impacted systems.

We've just experienced what happens when they don't. /end