Environment

Going green just got a little bit easier for Dallas residents. This week, a non-profit dedicated to helping homeowners convert to solar electricity launched a Dallas operation.

A few years ago, Dallas resident Adam Evans signed up for a 100% renewable energy plan in his home. This is an option available to Dallas residents who can select completely or partially green energy sources for their electricity. Evans worries about the United States’ fossil fuel usage, and he…

Have you ever wondered if those “Ozone Action Day Tomorrow” signs actually do anything, if people change their well-worn patterns just because of an orange and black sign flashing past the window? We did too. But the answer, it turns out, is complicated.

Several Southern Methodist University researchers were part of the team of scientists who published a study on Monday which indicates that earthquake activity in West Texas has significantly increased as oil and gas production has gone up in the region.

Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in the DFW area went up a startling 27% per person between 1990 and 2017, according to new data released from Boston University’s Database of Road Transportation Emissions and analyzed by the New York Times.

When Marsha Jackson moved to the red-brick home in southern Dallas over two decades ago, her daughter was overjoyed to have a pasture to keep her horses. But since an industrial recycling plant opened up next door at the beginning of last year, the clear stream and fresh air are…

Thigh-high grasses and plant stalks thwack the sides of the all-terrain buggy as Meredith Ellis maneuvers it down a faint double track through a dense pasture. Grasshoppers launch out of the way, whirring past bright purple, thistle-like Leavenworth’s eryngo that poke up alongside creamy milkweed flowers. Yellow and purple wildflowers…

A wind farm proposal is dividing a quiet, rural community. Residents who oppose the wind farm say that the companies tactics have been misleading and don’t properly take into account the impact the towers would have on the community.

A flash drought is creating perfect wildfire conditions in Texas

Eat less meat: the refrain has run through many recent articles and reports about climate change and the urgent need to take care of the world and manage its natural resources. And the most recent United Nations climate report, or at least a lot of the coverage of it, said…

July is likely to be the hottest month ever recorded on earth. And while the planet has been heating up, so too has been Texas’ renewable energy industry. For the first time in the brief history of wind power, Texas produced more energy from wind than coal, by a small…

Scientists should study Texas. We may be the secret to understanding climate change denial. In fact, the longer they fail to study Texas, the longer it will be before anybody figures out what’s wrong with people. What’s wrong is President Donald Trump. But Texas. Trump rolled back EPA controls on…

We were on vacation. We went to the National Butterfly Center on the Mexican border near Mission last week to see butterflies. It was coincidence my wife and I were there with friends the same day President Donald Trump declared his border wall emergency. But what a coincidence. I don’t…

Texas State Rep. Rafael Anchia is doing a larger version of the same thing my own Dallas city council member did for people on my street two years ago – using political pressure to push a natural gas utility to clean up its act. Sometimes we have to use politics…

Last week I walked into Gilley’s in the Cedars and found a huge room packed shoulder-to-shoulder with sleek, gray-headed men in great suits or golf leisure clothes, many of them arm and arm with skinny women sporting $220 hair dyes and shoes beyond my comprehension. The event was the unveiling…

Next time somebody wants to charge you 25 percent extra for a house because it’s near a man-made private lake in Texas, ask him to tell you who’s on the hook when the dam blows out. That’s the lesson homeowners are about to learn in Arlington. Prestonwood Lake, about 3.5…

My job is hard. Sometimes I hear terrible things — things I have to live with because of my work. For example, in a recent conversation I was told something positive about the Trinity Forest Golf Club. How do you think that made me feel? But I soldier on, and…

At the very core of the Hurricane Harvey story is a writing problem that has bedeviled me ever since Harvey hit Houston a year ago. When Harvey struck Houston in August 2017, it tied with Katrina in New Orleans a dozen years earlier: Together, they are the two costliest tropical…

When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott preemptively declared Hurricane Harvey a disaster last Aug. 23, chemical plants and oil refineries in the Corpus Christi area shut down before rain from the storm even started falling, according to a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project. That minimized unnecessary air pollution caused…

I’m not really supposed to tell you this, but sometimes I find myself writing about a topic for a long time, and then all of a sudden I wonder what in the world I’m even talking about. Yeah, I know. You can’t believe that. Shocked and amazed. But it happens…

Every once in while, we should take a little trip to the Outermost Thought Ozonosphere, if for no better reason than we need a vacation. And on a recent visit out there, guess what I found! Dallas! At the global cutting edge. No, I mean really. C’mon, I’ll take you…