A Texan plan for the Texas coast
Long before Hurricane Harvey churned up the Gulf of Mexico, conservationist and environmental lawyer Jim Blackburn was warning anybody who would listen that the Texas coast was in danger of being damaged beyond repair. After decades of visiting with people who live and work along the coast, Blackburn has learned that when he talks about saving the environment in monetary terms, people listen. His new book, “A Texan Plan for the Texas Coast,” makes the unconventional case that any successful strategy for saving the coast needs to be about making money.
The Texas coast is my place, a place of soft mud and hardheaded people. It is a place of natural wonder, of neotropical songbirds and endangered whooping cranes, a place of marshes and shrimp, a fisherman’s paradise. It is also the global center of the oil, gas, and plastics businesses and home to major real estate development in and around Houston. This region is facing long-term problems that threaten its ecology as well as its economy and social structure. It lacks resilience on all levels. Yet on a good day, I see solutions to these challenges, solutions applicable throughout the United States and the world. And today is a good day.
We are living in a time when the Earth is filling up with humans and human impacts, yet we have value sets, policies, and thinking that were developed during a time when the world was relatively empty of people and impacts. My favorite economist, Herman Daly, wrote about the distinction between empty-world thinking and full-world thinking. The empty world is what our parents and especially their parents and grandparents were born into — a world that was relatively empty of humans and human impacts, a world where there was always a perceived frontier.
Today there is a different type of frontier. If we are to flourish over the next century, we will need to adapt to the realities of the “full world.” We will need to “settle” this new frontier.
The Texas coast will be affected by these “full world” realities. If we are opportunistic and apply ourselves, this transition to the full world will open up opportunities for actions and strategies that can lead to long-term coastal protection and even enhance the coast over its current situation, moving from minimization of impact to regeneration. But like many aspects of life, realizing these opportunities will require leadership and creativity and bold action.
This new frontier — the full world — is one where resources are limited, where every gallon of water counts, where every ton of carbon dioxide is tracked, where the successful companies are those that combine economic, ecological, and social thinking. Today, our systems and our thinking are still firmly rooted in a time of expansion, whereas our reality is becom-