Going green?: Houston
Houston oil bosses swallow green pill
Business leaders in the oil-producing city of Houston, historically suspicious of environmental protection efforts, have endorsed California's low emission vehicle standards, a spokeswoman for a key business group said today.
"It's time for the Houston business community to step up and change the image of our region," said John Hofmeister, chairman of the Greater Houston Partnership, a group that includes the Chamber of Commerce, Reuters reported.
Hofmeister is president of Shell Oil, one of several companies that have endorsed so-called green initiatives, a trend on the rise across the US.
The Partnership board passed a resolution this week supporting adoption by the Texas Legislature of the California standard on mobile pollutants, calling it "a useful strategy to reduce these emissions".
The move reversed a Partnership board vote in 1992 to oppose California standards, and an analyst said it means that concern about economic growth has trumped resistance to costly clean-air rules.
"They love oil and gas, but they love economic growth and prosperity more," said Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociology professor who regularly surveys public attitudes in Houston.
The people who will work in "the knowledge economy" of the future will be free to live anywhere, and they are unlikely to choose Houston if it is "a flat, ugly, polluted place," Klineberg said.
While Houston is greener and cleaner than many might believe, it is a "non-attainment zone" failing to meet federal air quality standards and faces restrictions on growth if ozone and other pollution are not reduced.
"The public has always been concerned about the environment," said Klineberg, who began his annual surveys in 1982. "But the revolution is in the business community's interest in these things."
Still, Klineberg said many environmental advocates remain suspicious.
"Things that would have been inconceivable five years ago are now being said, but implementing them is another story," Klineberg said.
In a Partnership news release, Hofmeister presented the shift as just one of "forward-thinking initiatives our region has embraced in an effort to achieve needed mobile emission reductions."
Klineberg said concern about the environment has been growing in Houston as the percentage of the economy dependent on oil has declined from 82% in 1982 to 45% today, according to some calculations.
"Each new year of the Partnership brings increasingly clear recognition that the strategies that need to be in place for economic success in the 21st Century are different from those that worked in the 20th," Klineberg said.
But 45% is still a significant portion of the economy.
"It's very hard for this traditional, business-oriented city controlled by oil and gas to make the kind of changes that are going to be required," Klineberg said.