Sept. 4, 2017 – floodwater in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey near the Addicks and Barker Reservoirs in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip
Texas should require climate polluters to pay their fair share of the Hurricane Harvey recovery effort, and Public Citizen will tell Texas lawmakers this on Wednesday.
Adrian Shelley testifying in front of House Natural Resources Committee in Houston on paying for infrastructure post Harvey flooding. Click here to watch, see written transcript of his remarks below.
Responding to an interim charge from Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, the House Natural Resources Committee is hold a hearing at 10 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, October 4, 2017 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. The hearing will take public testimony on issues related to Hurricane Harvey and flooding in general.
The hearing comes amid a disagreement between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner about how to fund the Harvey recovery effort. After Turner proposed an unpopular temporary increase in property taxes, the governor allocated $50 million from the state’s disaster relief fund – representing half of the total for the biennium – for Harvey recovery. The governor has not foreclosed the possibility of allocating Rainy Day funds as well, though he has stated that would not happen before the 2019 legislative session.
For Wednesday’s hearing, the committee has asked for strategies to fund efforts to mitigate future flood events.
“Fossil fuel companies have shirked their responsibility for climate change for too long, with some aware for at least 40 years of the role their industry has played,” said Adrian Shelley, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, who is testifying on Wednesday. “Houstonians have paid the cost of the carbon pollution industry’s neglect. It’s time climate polluters pay their fair share.”
The contribution to climate change by carbon polluters, including the fossil fuel industry, worsened Harvey’s impact on Texas. Ninety companies from around the world, mostly from the fossil fuel industry, contributed 57 percent of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and approximately 42 to 50 percent of the rise in global mean surface temperature between 1880 and 2010 globally, according to a recent report in the journal Climate Change. Many of those companies have offices in Houston.
According to Dr. Kevin Trenberth with the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, “The human contribution can be up to 30 percent or so of the total rainfall coming out of the storm. It may have been a strong storm, and it may have caused a lot of problems anyway – but [human-caused climate change] amplifies the damage considerably.”
If you are in the Houston area, and wish to testify in front of this committee come to the George R. Brown Convention Center, 1001 Avenida De Las Americas, Houston, TX 77010 (Room 371) by 10 am. Witnesses can sign up to testify at that time. If you do not have time to wait to testify, you can provide 16 copies of written testimony to the clerk when you sign up.
Below is testimony presented to the House Natural Resource Committee by Adrian Shelley, Director of the Texas office of Public Citizen on Wednesday, October 4, 2017
It’s been more than a month since Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Texas Coast, and we are still tallying the damage. We don’t know how many homes were flooded, how many cars were destroyed, or how many billions the recovery will cost. We do know that the recovery needs will exceed our government resources. Even with contributions at every level of government, we will not have enough to fund the recovery effort. Many—perhaps most—Houstonians have already borne some of the costs of Harvey in lost property and lost wages. Many more will find that insurance and government relief will not be enough to cover their losses.
There is another source of funding for Harvey recovery: the carbon pollution industry. If you don’t like hearing the words “climate change,” then substitute the words “extreme weather” in the rest of my remarks. We know that extreme weather made Harvey worse. Dr. Kevin Trenberth with the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that 30% of the impact of Harvey was attributable to climate change—sorry, extreme weather. We know that some of the biggest climate polluters in the fossil fuel industry have known about extreme weather for at least 40 years. And we know that they have failed to act, going so far as to obscure evidence of their role in extreme weather.
Ninety companies from around the world, mostly from the fossil fuel industry, contributed 57 percent of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and approximately 42 to 50 percent of the rise in global mean surface temperature between 1880 and 2010 globally, according to a recent report in the journal Climate Change. Many of those companies have offices in Houston.
I know that these companies have paid their fair share of campaign contributions, so what I am about to say might not be popular with you. But make no mistake: carbon polluters bear responsibility for Hurricane Harvey. They are culpable, and their role can be quantified. It is time for members of those industries to act like the leaders they pretend to be. They should pay their fair share of the recovery effort, and they should fund what must happen next: the effort to prepare Houston for the next big storm.
Because whether we believe in it or not, extreme weather is here to stay.
