I have noted on this blog in the past about the massive amount of pollution the state of Texas produces. If Texas was a country, there would only be six other countries that produce more pollution (and one of them would, of course, be the United States). That's an inexcusable amount of pollution for a single state to be producing.
And it doesn't get any better when we only consider the "greenhouse gas" pollution (a primary cause of global climate change). While all states produce some greenhouse gas, and some states produce a lot of it -- no state is even close to Texas in the amount of greenhouse gas it produces. The chart above, from info provided at Moyers & company, shows that Texas produces nearly three times as much as Indiana (the state producing the second largest amount).
While it is true that Texas is a large state, that cannot be the only reason for the massive amount of pollution. Other large states (California, Florida, New York, etc.) don't produce anywhere near the amount that Texas produces. The real reason is that Texas is ruled by Republican officials, who hold a lll statewide elected offices and significant majorities in both the House and Senate in the state's legislature -- and they long ago sold out to the giant corporate polluters.
The truth is that corporations don't have to follow many regulations in Texas, especially regarding pollution. That's because the Republicans do everything they can to help those corporations avoid regulations. Every time the EPA issues a regulation to try and rein in some pollution, Texas takes them to court. And it even got so bad that the EPA finally had to take over the issuance of permits for new chemical and energy plants (because Texas was approving permits for big polluters with no restrictions).
Republican officials in Texas aren't just climate change deniers -- they are corporate whores. They don't care about the health of Texas citizens. They don't care about the state's environment. They don't care about the pollution from Texas that is carried by winds to other states. The only thing they do care about is protecting the corporations from having to clean up their pollution (or paying their fair share in taxes).
Texas needs to change -- for the good of its citizens, and for the good of the citizens in the United States as a whole. But that will never happen as long as the Republicans stay in power.
