TexasVox: The Voice of Public Citizen in Texas

Public Citizen will be testifying on nearly three dozen bills today during committee meetings in the House and Senate.  You can watch the action in the House or the Senate by going to the individual committees.  Be sure to tune in to our 10am Press Conference on a coal moratorium by clicking on the link to the Senate Press Room in the video feeds.  Links to the committees we’ll be testifying in all day today:

House Agriculture and Livestock 7:30 am

Senate Business and Commerce  8am  (where most of the solar bills will be heard)

Senate Natural Resources 1pm (including the coal moratorium)

House State Affairs 1pm

Also, if you’re looking for something to do today, come down and show your support for solar energy, the coal moratorium, or any of the other over 30 bills we’ll be testifying on.

For those of you interested in some light reading, I highly reccomend Forecast: The Global Conseqeunces of Climate Change by Stephen Faris.  As an international correspondant, he has seen how the conflict in Darfur began as a conflict over resources, and how the wildfires of Australia have decimated the countryside.  This is just a taste of things to come in a world of disrupted and rapidly changing climate.  The following excerpts are available:

Part 1: The Florida Keys are sinking

Part 1: Can insurance cover the costs of climate change?

Part 1: Who will be able to afford to live on the coast?

Part 2: Pathogens find new habitats

Part 2: Countries could backslide into poverty

Part 2: How disease relates to carbon dioxide

Part 3: Easier passage through the Arctic

Part 3: A scramble for control of the Arctic

Part 3: Opening the Arctic to damage

Also, for anyone who missed it, an article in today’s Washington Post about the EPA qietly delivering to Obama a finding that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant,(like we needed the EPA to tell us that) opening the door for states to regulate emissions standards for cars, permitting of CO2 in power plants, etc.