HOUSTON at the CROSSROADS: RESILIENCE and SUSTAINABILITY in the 21St CENTURY

HOUSTON AT THE CROSSROADS: RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY IN THE 21st CENTURY Jim Blackburn, J.D. Professor in the Practice of Environmental Law, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University; Co-director, Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster (SSPEED) Center; Faculty Scholar, Baker Institute April 2018 © 2018 by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Wherever feasible, papers are reviewed by outside experts before they are released. However, the research and views expressed in this paper are those of the individual researcher(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. Jim Blackburn, J.D. “Houston at the Crossroads: Resilience and Sustainability in the 21st Century” Houston at the Crossroads Introduction Houston is at a crossroads, with one pathway leading to adaptation and long-term success in the 21st century, and the other leading to failure based on inability to compete in the 21st century. Robert Johnson, the great blues musician, is pictured below because of a story surrounding his music. As the legend goes, Johnson left his home not being able to play the guitar, made a deal with the devil at the crossroads, and came back as a genius guitar- playing blues musician, embellishing the mythology of the crossroads as a mystical place. Some of the ideas of this paper may seem like a deal with the devil to some of you, but in my opinion, we need to learn to play the guitar and don’t really know how right now. Figure 1. Blues Musician Robert Johnson Source: Hooks Bros., Memphis, circa 1935, ©1989 Delta Haze Corporation The paper is broken into five parts: Houston’s past, current issues, ideas from others, our current assets for change, and ideas for adoption as future policy. The basic premise is that Houston’s current financial position in the world is at risk if we don’t change. And when you speak about money in Houston, people listen. The Past Houston’s past is instructive of attitudes and difficulties. The city was founded after Texas gained independence from Mexico by entrepreneurial developers with a colorful, if not accurate, vision for Houston’s future. Houston did not really flourish until two events occurred in 1900: the Great Galveston Hurricane destroyed Galveston and oil was 2 Houston at the Crossroads discovered at the Spindletop field on the Texas coast. This was about the same time that the horse and buggy was disappearing and being replaced by the internal combustion engine and the precursors to the modern-day car. Indeed, the horse-drawn buggy is relevant to this story of the crossroads—when the automobile came along, money went with it and away from the past, from the horse and buggy. As my business mentor Jake Hershey often reminded me, nothing changes faster than a company on the trail of money—something we all should keep in mind in the early 21st century. Houston’s port is not natural. It was dredged across Galveston Bay, through oyster reefs that cattle used to cross between Smith Point and Eagle Point, and up into the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou. The Port of Houston opened in 1914 at about the same time the Panama Canal was completed, showing excellent planning and timing. These events set the course for significant growth in Houston and Harris County, whose respective populations went from about 45,000 and 65,000 in 1900 to about 940,000 and 1.2 million in 1960. Figure 2. Man-made Port of Houston, 1914 Source: Image courtesy of Port Houston, http://porthouston.com/about-us/background-and-history/ From 1960 until 2000, Houston’s growth exploded. During this time, Houston became synonymous with technology. It became the oil center of the world at the height of the hydrocarbon era, hosting the Offshore Technology Conference and numerous other global events. It received the moniker “Space City” for its NASA Johnson Space Center and Mission Control Center, and it was home to the Astrodome, the self-proclaimed “Eighth Wonder of the World.” But this period was also the beginning of the era of climate change, starting with the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 and the founding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), setting in motion a collision of worldviews that will define the first half of the 21st century. By 2000, Houston grew to 1.95 million residents and Harris County exploded to about 3.4 3 Houston at the Crossroads million people, creating in the unincorporated areas of the county a suburban complex that, if incorporated, would have been the fourth- or fifth-largest city in Texas. From 2000 to 2015, the complexion of growth and development in Houston began to change. Of greatest importance during this time was Tropical Storm Allison, a major rainfall event that caused widespread flooding across Houston, particularly in the northern and eastern parts of Harris County. From the vantage point of today, Allison was a forerunner event, a harbinger of big rainfalls yet to come. Houston was experiencing the first wave of a changing climate, but Allison was treated simply as an aberration, as indicated by the title of the Harris County Flood Control District’s report, “Off The Charts.” And while Houston’s population began to level off to about 2 million persons by 2015, Harris County grew by another million to a total population of 4.4 million. Figure 3. 12-hour Rainfall Intensity from Tropical Storm Allison, 2001 Source: “Off the Charts,” Harris County Flood Control District The period from 2015 to early 2018 has been a bit of a different story, leading to the opinion that Houston today is at a crossroads. 2015 marked the first time that the Earth’s atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide exceeded 400 parts per million (ppm), up from less than 300 ppm in 1900, an unprecedented change in that length of time (as far as can be discerned from the Earth’s geologic record). This landmark helped fuel global concerns about climate change, leading to the Paris Agreement of 2015. Then, in August 2017, Hurricane Harvey pounded the Texas coast with an unprecedented amount of rain, inundating Houston and Southeast Texas, wiping out prior rainfall records, and causing record economic and social damage to nearly every corner of Harris County. On top of these two events, Amazon decided not to include Houston on its list of 25 finalists for the 4 Houston at the Crossroads site of its second U.S. headquarters. For many in Houston, it was hard to imagine that their city would not at least be among the top 25, yet it was not. Understanding why it was not, and what we need to do to change that reality, is what the crossroads analogy is all about: a 20th-century city trying to find the path to success in the 21st century. Figure 4. Unprecedented Rise of Global CO2 Emissions, 1900–2015 Source: Prepared for Jim Blackburn by Christina Walsh Current Issues For the purposes of this paper, three key concepts for the future are considered: flooding, the climate and carbon, and food supply. There are certainly other issues that can and should be included on this list, but this is where I choose to start. Of these three issues, flooding is both an immediate and longer-term issue, and climate and carbon will become important in the next decade—as will issues of food supply resilience and integrity. These three issues underpin the economic realities of the future. The collective psyche of today’s Houstonians has been deeply affected by Tropical Storm Allison and the Memorial Day, Tax Day, and Halloween Day floods—all of which have occurred since 2000—events that seem to occur with increasing frequency, breaking past records, generating flooding beyond the so-called 100-year floodplain, and playing havoc with transportation, housing, and human security. And then came Harvey, a 4-day storm that dropped over 40 inches of rain across much of Harris County—a year’s worth of rain in four days, a storm event more “off the charts” than Allison was. If nothing else, 5 Houston at the Crossroads Hurricane Harvey signaled that a “new norm” has been established, changing forever our view of rainfall and flood planning in Houston. Figure 5. Record Rainfall from Hurricane Harvey, 2017 Source: Used with permission from the Houston Chronicle The issue that Houston is facing is rainfall of increasing intensity beyond the statistical norms of the past, creating what some call a “new norm,” “weird weather,” or climate change. Our climate is changing. We are experiencing extreme rainfall events more frequently than in the past, well beyond the norms of the past. The Gulf of Mexico is warming, providing more fuel for tropical storms and hurricanes. More moisture is evaporated with higher temperatures, hotter air can hold more moisture, and the jet stream is not always found today where it was in the past. Think of unanticipated weather events like Hurricane Sandy turning west rather than east, as almost every prior hurricane in history did, or Harvey coming ashore as a Category 4 storm and then stopping. We are experiencing what climate scientists have been predicting: that we will see more and more events at the edge of the bell curve of normal distribution. Allison, Tax Day, and 6 Houston at the Crossroads Harvey were all extremely rare events, falling outside the 1 percent (100-year) or even 0.2 percent (500-year) points on the bell curve of distribution.

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