Energy reality

Never has a bad omen seemed so lovely as the bluebonnets along the banks of White Oak Bayou.

Not that there's anything wrong with the flowers. The timing, on the other hand, is ominous. Those harbingers of a Texas spring set first bloom on Feb. 8 - a week earlier than previous records, according to Texas Monthly writer John Nova Lomax.

Does it have something to do with global warming? Anyone should be wary about drawing quick conclusions from anecdotes, but this is what we do know:

We know that there's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any other time in human civilization.

We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat from the sun.

We know that global temperatures have been hitting record highs.

Major oil and gas companies know this, too, which is why the likes of ExxonMobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Saudi Aramco and Total all recognize the risks and reality of man-made global warming, and have called for a reasonable policy response.

Scott Pruitt needs to get on board. The new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency has a long track record opposing federal environmental regulation as Oklahoma attorney general. He's publicly doubted the reality of global climate change. Emails made public this week reveal that he coordinated with industry and political groups to roll back environmental regulations. He even allowed corporate lobbyists to draft letters for him to send on state stationery.

For his next move, Pruitt is lining up to knock down the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which was created under President Obama to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

That's bad news for Texas - not just because climate change could hurt ranchers or rising sea levels could destroy Gulf Coast real estate.

Without the Clean Power Plan, coal might get a boost over natural gas to retake its spot as the nation's baseline energy source, Houston Chronicle reporter Ryan Handy wrote Tuesday.

Coal has been dying a slow death for decades. An industry that once employed more than 800,000 people now has a domestic workforce of one-tenth that size. That collapse in coal jobs didn't happen under Obama. It happened under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Now competition from cheaper, cleaner natural gas and the worldwide proliferation of pollution and global warming regulations threatens to strike a fatal blow.

Rather than confront the reality of energy markets, the White House is acting like a doctor who won't give up on a deathbed case while other patients grow sick from lack of routine care.

The natural gas industry needs trade deals that will promote exports to Asia and Europe. The wind and solar industry needs a next generation grid that will help bring electricity from windy and sunny fields into energy-hungry cities. The clean energy industry, by the way, creates around 3 million jobs, according to the Department of Energy's U.S. Energy and Employment Report.

Texas' own U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, is even promoting the idea of a bipartisan Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery Caucus to promote carbon capture technology and infrastructure. That's the sort of leadership on domestic energy we need to see from the White House.

Instead we're seeing a Trump administration lay the foundation for an energy model that looks less like Texas and more like Europe, where politicians create a dichotomy of coal and renewables - often at the expense of higher electricity prices without significant cuts to carbon emissions. The Texas model, on the other hand, emphasizes natural gas and new technology as a bridge between the policies of the past and the inevitable clean energy future. That model has proven affordable for consumers and successful at reducing carbon emissions.

The world is going to move forward on global warming policy one way or another, and the next ominous sign will be bigger than a bluebonnet. A 140-mile crack has been inching across an Antarctic ice shelf, threatening to create an iceberg the size of Rhode Island. It is time for the Trump administration to climb out of the coal mine and face reality.