Commentary
Texas Leads the Fight - Against Greenhouse Gas Regulations, But Not Greenhouse Gas Emissions
On January 11, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released data, reported by industry itself, on greenhouse gas emissions from nationwide power plants, refineries and chemical plants during 2010. According to that data, Texas continues to be the largest greenhouse gas emitter of any other state, releasing more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than even the combined total of the next two largest emitting states - Pennsylvania and Florida.
Despite these facts, Texas continues to lead the fight against the EPA’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, rather than leading the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions here in Texas and nationwide.
Spurred by a decision of the United States Supreme Court, the EPA promulgated federal greenhouse gas regulations effective January 2, 2011, that incorporated greenhouse gases into the definition of regulated pollutants that must be regulated.
Even though required by federal law --- which Texas agreed to implement and enforce within Texas borders in lieu of the EPA --- Texas refuses to implement the new greenhouse gas regulations. Texas is the only state to do so, saying it has “neither the authority nor the intention of interpreting, ignoring, or amending its laws in order to compel the permitting of greenhouse gas emissions.” Rather than working with the EPA to implement the new greenhouse gas regulations, as all 49 other states have done or are doing, Texas has chosen instead to challenge the EPA by filing at least two federal lawsuits. Despite Texas’s aggressive litigation efforts, the courts have refused three times now to block EPA from moving forward, even though underlying challenges to EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases are still pending. A three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the case in late February.
So, given Texas’s refusal, and in order to assure that Texas’s industries are not subject to delays or potential legal challenges and are able to move forward with planned construction and expansion projects, the EPA has taken the unusual, but legally permissible, step of temporarily taking over greenhouse gas permitting in Texas. Thus, until Texas agrees to regulate greenhouse gases, industrial facilities in Texas needing greenhouse gas permits must get them through the EPA, not the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ).
Interestingly, despite this bureaucratic stalemate, most of Texas industry, as it typically does in such situations, has worked cooperatively with the EPA to secure any necessary greenhouse gas permits. Even though the EPA has stated that it believes the TCEQ is best equipped to oversee greenhouse gas air permitting in Texas, it is currently providing Texas industries access to the permits they need to meet the greenhouse gas regulations. The EPA issued the first such permit in Texas in November, 2011, for a natural gas power plant to be built in Llano County that will replace an existing plant. At this time, fifteen other Texas companies have applied to the EPA for greenhouse gas permits.
So, despite “doom and gloom” predictions that administering the federally required greenhouse gas regulations will cause Texas to lose competiveness in the global marketplace, fail to attract new industry and jobs or foist higher costs on Texas consumers, implementation and enforcement of the regulations are proceeding in Texas --- not by our State, but by the EPA and responsible Texas industries.
Houston from a Distance
It has been a rough year for air quality in the Houston region. The hottest, driest summer in living memory made for some of the worst ozone days we have seen in years. The weather also lead to seemingly unstoppable brownouts in our heavily industrialized areas, meaning that places like the Ship Channel and Texas City saw (and smelled) many more incidents as facilities constantly went into upset when they suddenly lost power. And after a decade of air quality improvements, thanks to strengthened federal standards, we are left stranded in a void of indecision after the long delay of EPA’s choice of a new ozone standard was brought to a sudden conclusion by the White House’s political calculation.
I recently had the opportunity to reflect on Houston’s environmental predicament from the other side of the world. Taipei, one of the densest cities on earth, has a number of factors which make their air quality challenge even more daunting than that of Houston. The city is rimmed by spectacular mountains which have the unfortunate effect of trapping pollution in their bowl of a city. Though most of the large factories and generators are located outside Taipei, those massive pollution sources are more than replaced by the countless cars, mopeds and motorcycles choking Taipei’s streets. And the Chinese pollution which Californians frequently deride must first pass over the island of Taiwan on its journey west.
Yet despite these challenges, and an admittedly late start to regulation of environmental quality (leaded gasoline and two-stroke engines were outlawed only in the last decade), you get the sense that the people of Taiwan have recently come to hold their environment in their collective hand – acknowledging both how precious and how fragile it is.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in a series of pavilions in one of Taipei’s largest parks. Only one of these pavilions superficially has anything to do with the environment – the Ecoark – which is a huge monument to Taiwanese ingenuity and design. The Ecoark is a large exhibition hall built almost entirely of recycled plastic bottles and simple road-grade construction supplies. Extremely strong, extremely efficient, breathtakingly elegant and with a phenomenally small environmental footprint, the Ecoark is an embodiment of Taiwanese ability. It is also a beacon of the island’s environmental awakening. Constructed with funding by one of the island biggest corporations, it is a testament to the general acceptance by both individuals and big business of the limitations of natural resources and the imperative of finding a different way.
This lesson, and Taiwan’s attempt to embrace what it has learned, is much more subtly but powerfully illustrated in two smaller pavilions across the street from the Ecoark. The Pavilion of Dreams is a room by room showcase of Taiwan’s latest technological innovations. These breakthroughs are displayed, however, as pieces of nature – paper thin speakers are leaves in a forest, flexible light tubes are blooming plants and translucent display screens are molded as human cocoons.
Having explored the technology on display in the Dream Pavilion, I was more than curious as to what I would find in the Pavilion of the Future, expecting to be truly blown away by what this Asian tiger of a nation could really do. Once inside, however, I continually asked my guide if this was it? Was this all? Was I missing something? Because Taiwan, one of the most hyper-connected and digitally proficient countries in the world, built a testament to the future that was little more than a modest greenhouse. I mean, it was nice. They had different sections for different biomes – tropical, temperate forest, desert, alpine, etc. But it was a greenhouse, nothing more.
And then, somewhere while I was three levels up looking at cacti, I realized that this was actually someone’s very powerful statement. This is the future. The Pavilion of Dreams, full of moving multicolored plastic plants, beautiful though they might be, could never be a plant and our ingenuity could ultimately never substitute what nature has provided.
That’s when my entire trip finally started to fall into place. Taiwan might have been late to start regulating the fuels for and emissions from millions of mopeds, but when the argument was made and the choice was clear, the country rapidly started making a change. When the government realized it had to cut emissions from refineries and power plants, it didn’t wallow in a political fight over the electoral viability of cap and trade. It asked an economist what system would work best and have never looked back from their highly successful pollution tax. And even though they are not formally a member of the United Nations, the Taiwanese live on an island with scarce resources and very few options as to where they can go. They realize the precariousness of their position as our atmosphere warms and the climate changes and so are pushing to sign the Framework Convention on Climate Change. A statement, inarguably suffused with geo-political overtones and agendas, still powerful in its import to a people who increasingly embrace what the future means.
Maybe if in Houston we pretended for a while that the Gulf of Mexico extends a few dozen more miles inland we could get past the pablum and the need for federal dictates and care for our environment simply because we should.
Celebration of the life of David Marrack
Dr. David Marrack, M.B., B.S., M.D., died at the age of 88 on Friday, September 23, 2011 in Houston, TX. Dr. Marrack is a retired clinical pathologist, general practitioner and environmentalist whose career spanned more than 60 years. He was born to Dr. John Richard Marrack and Alice May Swaffield Milward on Christmas Day 1922 in the counties of Hartford and Essex, north of London. He was married on 11 June 1949 to Patricia Franklin Marrack who passed away July 4, 2004. His interest in public health is rooted in a 1937 typhoid epidemic in the London suburb of Croydon, which he assisted his father in the investigation. His concern for the issue deepened after surviving an event now called the "London Killer Fog". Dr. David Marrack graduated from the London Hospital Medical College in 1947 and served in the Royal Air Force's medical division during World War II, and left as squadron commander wing leader in 1951. After a fellowship at Barnes Jewish Hospital in 1953-54, he held a position as a pathologist at Westminster Hospital Medical School from 1954-58. From 1958-61 he served as a chemical pathologist at the Institute of Neurology, National Hospital for Nervous Disease, Queen Square, London. In 1961, Dr. Marrack, his wife, Patricia, and three children immigrated to the United States for a position as Chief of Biochemistry in Research Clinical Pathology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute and as an Associate Professor of Pathology at the University of Texas Postgraduate Medical School, Houston, Texas. In 1968 - 75 he became a Pathologist to the Harris County Hospital District at Ben Taub and Jefferson Davis Hospitals and Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Pathology Department, Houston, Texas.
His research and clinical training, and education at King's College in Cambridge, England, helped shape his views on environmental issues. Many people knew Dr. Marrack for his efforts to curtail air pollution, toxic releases, incineration issues and vehicular emissions. He served on the board of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP) for nearly two decades. He often was called to give expert testimony in those areas in hearings and lawsuits against polluters, and wrote more than 200 papers on the impact of bad air on people living in communities near industrial plant sites. Dr. Marrack was a well-known birder, an interest that was instilled at an early age by his father, Dr. John Richard Marrack. He was one of the founding members of the Houston Audubon Society, a member of the Sierra Club, and was a partner in the acquisition of the Altwater Prairie Chicken Refuge by the Nature Conservancy of Texas. His passion for birding took him to Russia, China, India, Japan, Costa Rica, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico and throughout the United States. He was a regular participant on the Gulf Coast Christmas Bird Counts. David and Patricia are survived by their children; Jane Marrack Harrison and her husband Charles W. Harrison III, Paul Marrack and wife Katharine Ogden Marrack, Mary Marrack Papke and husband Wallace E. Papke, Jr., grandchildren, Rachel Lynn Harrison, Stephan Michael Harrison and Andrew Ogden Marrack. All who live in Houston and the surrounding areas. A celebration of his life will be held from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Friday, October 21, 2011 at Nature Discovery Center Park, 7112 Newcastle Street, Bellaire, Texas 77401. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Nature Discovery Center Park at the address above or Air Alliance Houston (formally GHASP), 2409 Commerce Street, Suite A, Houston, TX 77003.
Momentum Begins Growing for Port of Houston Pressure
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