AUSTIN— Today, Life:Powered delivered a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott refuting extreme claims about catastrophic climate change in response to the “ludicrous” predictions made by a group of Texas academics. Life:Powered has offered to meet with Gov. Abbott to balance out the call for draconian policies that will significantly increase taxes and energy costs and discuss how Texas can continue to lead the world toward a more secure and prosperous energy future.
“It is important to note that predictions of increasing costs and lives lost due to a changing climate are far from certain and the premise that Texas can somehow prevent the climate from changing, let alone prevent severe weather, is ludicrous when confronted with empirical climate science and measurements,” the letter reads.
“To be clear, the climate is changing. It always has and always will. When confronted with climate scare tactics advocating for policies that will significantly increase taxes and energy costs, the question to ask is how anyone can justify such policies once they recognize the lack of materiality of domestic manmade emissions, the climate resilience that abundant energy provides, and the human cost of depriving people of affordable energy.”
The letter continues, “Even if one accepted the flawed premises espoused by the open letter you received, spending billions of dollars in Texas to affect a miniscule change in temperatures is not sound policy. Renewable energy sources have already received billions of dollars in subsidies from both federal tax credits and Chapter 312 and 313 tax abatements, which have distorted the Texas electricity market and undermined the market forces that would otherwise preserve existing dispatchable resources and attract new investments in natural gas fired generation. As a result, we now face reserve margins at record lows with more exposure to the intermittency of renewables than ever.”
The letter follows responses from Neil Frank, former director of the National Hurricane Center, and the CO2 Coalition, a group of 45 scientists committed to the dissemination of accurate climate change science, which also urged a robust scientific and policy discussion.