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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

In many years, the US seemed to be cooling, even while the rest of the world was warming. The temperature anomaly map often looked like this:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/2-Map-of-the-globe-showi...

It just felt so weird that the one place on the planet ideologically disposed to disbelieve in climate change would also be the one unaffected. The planet itself seemed to be conspiring.

Of course it wasn't, and neither is it "karma" to have an oil-wealth state suffering. It would be nice to have it nudge Texas (and its political allies) in the direction of accepting that climate change is not a gigantic hoax on them. Weather continues to not be the same as climate, but if a weather event convinces people to stop making excuses about climate change, then perhaps two bad things can cancel each other out.

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> neither is it "karma" to have an oil-wealth state suffering

Texas is an energy state. It has lots of oil. But it also has lots of natural gas [1], solar [2], wind [3] and uranium [4], geographically overlapping and exclusive in a way that's almost preternaturally ideal for extraction and commercialization.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=14431

[2] https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html

[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/wind/where-wind-power-is...

[4] https://www.eia.gov/uranium/reserves/reservemap.php

It also has a lot of climate denialists, including politicians with national levels of power. And it's clear that a huge chunk of the reason that it selects climate denialists to be in charge is to preserve the wealth from fossil fuels.

It's also great that they're investing in renewables. But they're also preventing the country as a whole from taking actions that are required to deal with climate change before it becomes a calamity. And the rest of the world isn't eager to shoulder that burden themselves while the US is still one of the largest contributors to the problem.

> also has a lot of climate denialists

On the ground level, Texans' views on climate change are middle of the road for America [1].

> politicians with national levels of power

Texan politicians wax lyrical about coal and oil. Do they actually block renewable projects, or is it all talk?

[1] https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...

One data point, but ~10 years ago, I called the electric providers in DFW to get some quotes. We have this and that option, yada yada yada. I told them that I wanted whatever was cheapest, and much to my surprise, it was the 100% wind option.

Texas' statewide politicians are all Republicans, and climate denialism is the official position of the Republican party. We withdrew from the Paris accords, and it's impossible to establish a national climate policy. It's less about any one project as that all projects that require legislation are dead on arrival.

It's hard to separate out the effects behind the scenes, but it's clear that Texas lawmakers are making promises about it.

Texas has built a lot of solar (more than California in recent years IIRC) because it's generally building-friendly. There has been some talk that they are going to start making it harder to do renewable projects due to politics.

So: so far all talk, but there is now some more specific talk.

It has other forms of energy available to it, but as a state, it's industry and political structure as a whole leans towards petro.

Looks like Canada shut off the A/C. Albertans should have tried that decades ago.

(This is a parody of the very real race-to-the-bottom attitude in the industry, and the oft-repeated "a little global warming goes a long way in Canada")

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