Texas is biggest carbon polluter (Well, Everything is Bigger in Texas, right?)

AP on Yahoo ^ | 1/16/08 | April Castro - ap

[TexanToTheCore]

“”Everything’s big in Texas”
Except humility”

Nope. We are the most humble people on earth. Even named a town for that characteristic. Humble, Texas.

[texas_mrs]

Austin is full of environmentalists who aren’t from Texas but are busy trying to remake the state into another California.

[thackney]

Also Lousiana, not Pennsylvania

Cheers

[oldbill]

Anybody care to guess the carbon footprint of a nuclear power plant (excluding the employee cars in the parking lot)?

[in hoc signo vinces]

I try my best to leave as big a carbon foot print as possible...

so the Goreacles/Enviro-cultists can either STFU or ESAD....

[Nervous Tick]

“April Castro”, huh? Sounds like a commie pinko to me!

Say, I wonder what it would take to move up to #6 polluter? We Texans are very competitive...

[Arrowhead1952]

Austin is full of environmentalists who aren’t from Texas but are busy trying to remake the state into another California.

No kidding, and we are sick and tired of all those idiots. The TEQC has ruined Texas.

[chrisser]

Texans' fondness for gas-guzzling trucks ...

I don't have the honor of being a Texan, but it seems to me that a lot of their "fondness for gas-guzzling trucks" has to do with large distances between cities and towns, quite a bit of undeveloped real estate, and more than the occassional need to haul/tow something bigger than a decaf latte from Starbucks.

May as well make the argument that farmers and ranchers have a "fondness for gas-guzzling trucks" or "gigantic, gas-guzzling tractors" to harvest their crops or long-haul truckers have a "fondness for gas-guzzling big rigs" to tow their trailers.

The libs need to get out of their urban hellholes and see what the rest of the country between the coasts looks like, and how her citizens live and work.

On second thought, just stay in your urban hellholes and leave the rest of us the h311 alone!

[VRWCmember]

The amount is more than that of California and Pennsylvania — the second- and third-ranking states — combined.

Yeah, well Texas has more land mass than California and Pennsylvania (and New York probably) combined.

[texas_mrs]

Hi Arrow, read your tagline.

Did you hear that woman on Rush today say that Huckabee IS Jimmy Carter all over again? I nearly fell on the floor laughing, but hey, that is a great analogy, don't you think?

[JFC]

You are right.. and Texas now has the largest wind mill farms in the country.. so you northerners are getting our fine produced electricity!

[Centurion2000]

Texans' fondness for large, manly vehicles has helped make the Lone Star State the biggest carbon polluter in the nation.

I wonder if they counted Mt St Helens in their calculations. Or the gasses released by Old Faithful and the other geysers. Or even better !! How about all the CO2 and ash released by all these forest fires because enviro-weenies prevent lumber harvesting???

Human activity is a tiny amount of carbon compared to natural processes.

[susannah59]

I don't have the honor of being a Texan, but it seems to me that a lot of their "fondness for gas-guzzling trucks" has to do with large distances between cities and towns, quite a bit of undeveloped real estate, and more than the occassional need to haul/tow something bigger than a decaf latte from Starbucks.

You are exactly right there.

Quite a few people outside of Austin, Houston, and Dallas live in places where it would be quite a hike or bike ride to get somewhere without using a motorized vehicle. Some of those live off the paved roads and would have a little enviro bread box bogged down to its axles after a rain or snow.

Little cars aren't much good for hauling cattle, either. Oh, I forgot, cows contribute to pollution too; we all should be vegetarians.

[texas_mrs]

Thanks, Chrisser, for your comments.

You are right on target. Also, regarding this comment from the author: Texans polled last spring listed the Iraq war and immigration as the nation's most pressing issues, with fewer than 4 percent saying the environment was a top concern.

You can be sure they got their panties in a wad on this response, so they try to make it appear Texans don't care about a clean environment when I am sure the response is due to the fact that our state is clean and appears even cleaner than some due to the wide open spaces. We care as much as anyone else and most do our part without the &#%@ government telling us to do so. WOT & illegal immigration trumps a non-existent problem, so the author tries to portray us in an unflattering way, IMHO.

[VRWCmember]

In fact, you could fit California and Pennsylvania and New York inside of Texas and still have room to throw in Delaware, Rhode Island, and Washinton DC.

[VRWCmember]

A multitude of factors contribute to the carbon output, among them: Texas' 19 coal-burning power plants; a heavy concentration of refineries and chemical plants

Yeah, those factors also contribute to the fact that Texas produces a lot of the power that people in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado consume.

[antinomian]

"Everything's big in Texas"

Except humility.

OK. We'll work on our humility. Then after a while we'll be the best at that too.

[NormsRevenge]

the fact that Texas produces a lot of the power that people in California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado consume.
—
Muchos GRacias FRom Kaleefornijaaa, Senor’

[coconutt2000]

more than 20 million registered vehicles, about one in four of them a pickup truck.

Because they're used for work..???

In other news, the cargo transport industry in the U.S. has the highest ratio of large trucks to employees of any other industry in the U.S.

[texas_mrs]

The dictionary defines humility in this way:

"modest opinion or estimate of one's own importance"

That being said, I believe we do posess humility, as we have not come close to the actual importance of our state, but have expressed only a tiny fraction of it here today.

;)