A Great Place to Live
You can make a case that the U.S. state with the brightest long-term economic future is Texas.
It’s a more affordable place to live than much of the Northeast or West Coast and still has powerful ways to draw new residents, including a thriving cultural scene, a diverse population and top research universities. Its elementary schools and middle schools perform well above average in reading and math (and notably ahead of California’s), according to the Urban Institute. As California was in the 20th century, Texas today looks like a state that can embody and shape the country’s future.
Even with its growing tech and health care industries, the Texas economy revolves around oil and gas. And those fossil fuels have created two threats to the state’s economic future.
Threats to the Economy
The first threat is climate change, which is making Texas a less pleasant place to live. The number of 95-degree days has spiked, and severe hurricanes have become more common. Paradoxically, climate change may also be weakening the jet stream, making bouts of frigid weather more common.
On the national level, Texas politicians have played a central role in preventing action to slow climate change. On the local level, leaders have failed to prepare for the new era of extreme weather — including leaving the electricity grid vulnerable to last week’s cold spell, which in turn left millions of Texans without power and water.
The second threat is related to climate change but different. It comes from the possibility that alternative energy sources like wind and solar power are becoming cheap enough to shrink Texas’ oil and gas industry.
Protecting Fossil Fuels
Instead of investing adequately in new energy forms, though, many Texas politicians have tried to protect fossil fuels. Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott went so far as to blame wind and solar energy — falsely — for causing the blackouts when the main culprit was the failure of natural gas.
Texas’ political and business leaders are sacrificing the future for the present. In 1999, the decision was made to embark on the nation’s most extensive experiment in electrical deregulation. The state handed control of the entire electricity delivery system to a market-based patchwork of private generators, transmission companies and energy retailers. Lower-cost power generally became true, but the newly deregulated system came with few safeguards and even fewer enforced rules. There was little financial incentive to invest in weather protection and maintenance. Texas has resisted regulation and investments that could have made their power grid more resilient to severe weather, and have tried to wish away climate change even as it forces Texans to endure more miserable weather.
In those ways, Texas is offering a different — and more worrisome — glimpse into the future. Meanwhile, with temps back in the 70s Texans continue to grapple with a water, food shortage and clean-up crisis.