The San Antonio Report Commentary provides a space for our community to share perspectives and offer solutions to pressing local issues. The views expressed in this commentary belong solely to the authors.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 novel of a climate-change dystopia, Ministry for the Future, begins with a brutal description of India’s deadly heat wave. The protagonist spends a miserable day desperately trying to find air conditioning to escape the deadly heat, which is made worse by the warm Indian Ocean pumping moisture into the air.
This scenario sounds like science fiction, but it’s not hard to imagine for Houston residents who endured power outages and intense heat after Hurricane Beryl. Extreme heat, especially high humidity, is a deadly weather phenomenon, more deadly than spectacular weather disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes. Extreme heat making more parts of the world “uninhabitable” is a scenario that keeps climate scientists up at night.
As an atmospheric scientist who has studied Texas weather patterns for over a decade, I can attest that Texas is getting hotter at an alarming rate. Data from the Texas Office of the Climatologist predicts that 100-degree days will occur four times more often in 2030 than they did in the 1970s and 1980s. This is more than just an issue of discomfort; it threatens public health and our way of life.
While attending Southwestern University, I taught students about the far-reaching effects of climate change, including extreme heat waves. The combination of high temperatures and high humidity makes outdoor conditions dangerous, putting people who work outdoors and those without access to air conditioning at risk. Heatwaves kill more people each year than any other weather disaster. Mental health can also be affected, with emergency rooms reporting increased visits due to depression, anxiety, and violence during heat waves.
The heatwave is also a problem for Texas in other ways. Drier soils make droughts worse, making wildfires more likely and dangerous. For example, the Edwards Aquifer is currently at a 34-year low due to the drought, threatening the health and safety of all San Antonians. Some of Texas’ most iconic landscapes rely on regular rainfall. Examples include a herd of cows, a vast cotton field, and neat rows of pecan trees. But if temperatures continue to rise, this spectacular sight could disappear.
What is causing such an extreme situation and what can be done about it?
The gas mixture in our atmosphere always contains greenhouse gases, which trap enough heat to keep Earth’s temperature within a range where life can survive. However, excess of these greenhouse gases causes climate change. These greenhouse gases result from human activities such as burning fossil fuels for electricity and transportation. Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas, but another gas, methane, is responsible for about 30% of the global temperature increase since the Industrial Revolution.
The oil and gas industry is the largest industrial source of methane. At well sites, methane can be released during normal operations, through leaking equipment, or under unusual circumstances. It leaks from pipelines and valves and is carried from wells to refineries. When excess methane gas is combusted or combusted, unburned methane leaks into the atmosphere. In some cases, the flare is not ignited and straight methane is released directly into the air. This is not only a big problem for the climate; Pollution from oil and gas operations also causes poor air quality, which is unhealthy for people living nearby.
The Eagle Ford Shale Basin in South Texas is home to dozens of oil and gas production sites that leak methane. A 2020 study showed that Latina women living in the region were 50% more likely to give birth prematurely due to high levels of methane in the air.
In addition to causing serious health problems, methane’s warming potential is staggering, 80 times greater than atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, there are some silver linings. Methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime than CO2. This means that by acting now to reduce methane emissions, we can make a difference in the short term to climate change and its effects, such as extreme heat.
Methane emissions are not inevitable. We have technology to capture excess gas instead of venting or combusting it, and we also have new tools to detect and measure where methane emissions occur. Recent federal legislation offers both a carrot and a stick, with incentives for companies that reduce methane emissions and fees for large polluters that don’t. The Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized new rules to significantly reduce methane and other harmful pollution from oil and gas operations.
We are at a critical moment to mitigate climate change by significantly reducing industrial methane emissions. Texas’ future depends on a safe and stable climate. Extreme heat threatens the state’s health by endangering outdoor environments, exacerbating droughts and making wildfires more likely. We have the tools and funding to reduce methane emissions. It’s time for Texans to demand that oil and gas companies clean up their act.
