Every morning, we send you a free email packed with Austin news, business, and entertainment. Join 16,000+ readers who wake up to Austonia's newsletter.
Featured
austonia newsletter
Most viewed
The Texas Army National Guard dispatched troops to the state Capitol in June amid protests over the death of George Floyd.
The Texas Army National Guard said Monday that it had been ordered by Gov. Greg Abbott to dispatch 1,000 troops to five major cities across the state, including Austin, in connection with the election.
Troops could be deployed to Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio as soon as this weekend, the San Antonio Express News reported.
"The Texas Military Department was activated to provide additional support to the Department of Public Safety in the summer of 2020," Maj. Gen. Tracy R. Norris, the Adjutant General of Texas, said in a statement emailed to Austonia. "Texas Service Members continue to support DPS in this capacity, guarding historical landmarks such as the Alamo and the State Capitol. To be clear, there has been no request nor any plan to provide any type of support at any polling location in Texas."
Austin Mayor Steve Adler was not immediately available for comment.
Local police and city leaders said earlier this month that they are preparing for November protests.
"The Austin Police Department will plan and prepare for any large protest or civil unrest events related to the upcoming elections," spokesperson Tara Long said in an email to Austonia. "The goal of such preparations is to ensure the safety of the community, while protecting the rights of people to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights."
Austinites marched through the city on the day after the November 2016 election to protest Donald Trump's victory in spite of the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. And tens of thousands descended on downtown Austin in January 2017, on the day after Trump's inauguration, in solidarity with the Women's March on Washington.
More recently, Austinites have protested police violence and the death of George Floyd. Although most of the protests have been peaceful, one in July ended in the shooting death of armed demonstrator Garrett Foster.
Some attendees at a memorial for Foster showed up heavily armed, including members of the Proud Boys militia, a right-wing extremist group.
Texas Guard members were deployed to the state Capitol, as well as other locations, during these protests.
More on Election Day:
After a summer of tension and protest, Austin braces for election-week unrest(Shutterstock)- Nazis and antifa were part of weekend protests in Texas cities, state ... ›
- Members of the far-right Proud Boys militia stand on Congress ... ›
- Armed protesters ride in the back of a pickup truck from a rally at the ... ›
- Austin police prepare for election-week protests - austonia ›
- Two days of protest: demonstrators shut down I-35, Austin police ... ›
- LIVE UPDATES: No lines at many East Austin voting sites on Election Day morning - austonia ›
- Election protests could test new Austin police policies - austonia ›
- Austin progressives protest to continue activism after election - austonia ›
- Capitol Grounds will reopen to the public tomorrow - austonia ›
- Austin police, businesses prep for Inauguration Day protests - austonia ›
- Texas gov: legislative goals are police funding, camping ban - austonia ›
Popular
UT is developing technology targeted at power, steel, cement and other industrial plants to lower emissions. (UT Austin)
The ruling was brought after a challenge to a lower court opinion brought by Texas and more than a dozen other states.
Vaibhav Bahadur, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin called the SCOTUS decision significant, noting that Texas is the biggest energy producer in the U.S., and produces more energy than the United Kingdom.
“Power generation accounts for a significant fraction of U.S. carbon emissions, and the EPA loses its ability to control what's happening in about half of that sector,” Bahadur said. “And it's not just the U.S., I think people and environmentalists on pretty much anywhere on the planet will be disappointed because this is going in the wrong direction. We know we want to be decarbonizing, and this is essentially putting a roadblock on progress toward decarbonization.”
So, we’re going to need some insurance, Bahadur says. He’s carrying out work that’ll act as such through his research on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), the process of sucking carbon from the air and burying it.
For the past five years, he’s been working on a novel approach to storing carbon. It involves supercharging the formation of carbon dioxide-based crystal structures and storing billions of tons of carbon under the ocean floor.
“If all of this is successful, then we will have another option for safely and responsibly storing carbon at the bottom of the seabed for essentially eternity,” Bahadur said.
Still, Bahadur talked about a different approach to responsibly cutting down emissions in the next decade, and doing so in a meaningful and substantial way, then the environment will eventually heal itself and we might not need CCS.
But that’s not the path we’re headed down.
“We're already starting to see temperature records being shattered this year, and we're still to hit peak summer,” Bahadur said. “All of this just makes me think that we need CCS to a larger extent, and possibly sooner than what a lot of scientists anticipate, especially if we can't keep our emissions in check.”
Gary Rochelle, a professor in the department of chemical engineering at UT, thinks CCS was ready to be deployed in 2010 and those 12 years have made a difference.
“But now we've emitted all that CO2,” Rochelle said. “And unfortunately, unlike other pollutants, when you emit CO2, it's there. It's not going away.”
Gary Rochelle and Vaibhav Bahadur are both researching technology to address carbon emissions. (UT)
Still, the delay is good in that now researchers like him have had time to learn about and improve the technology, allowing for fewer problems once it's deployed.
In December, UT announced a licensing agreement with advanced technology company Honeywell. The technology from that is targeted at power, steel, cement and other industrial plants to lower emissions.
Rochelle has been working on the technology since 2000 as part of an international collaborative effort. When he talked to Austonia on Thursday, he had just had calls with collaborators in Germany and Norway. Currently, he’s working with some Ph.D. students on addressing a chemical reaction that can happen with the technology known as oxidation that could lead to ammonia emissions and cause problems for a large-scale commercial unit.
Rochelle says he’s driven to this work because he wants to make a contribution.
“We're trying to develop this technology so that we can make a difference,” Rochelle said. “It's a nice problem to work on. The students are motivated and those are the primary things which drive us.”
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated the high court’s decision which acted as a blow to President Joe Biden’s plan to reduce emissions.
“Today’s landmark victory against an out-of-control administration is also a big win for Americans who worry about skyrocketing energy costs due to expensive federal regulations that threaten our energy industry,” Abbott said. “President Biden cannot keep attacking the energy industry and the hardworking men and women who power our nation.”
- UT reports three students bitten by raccoons - austonia ›
- UT athletes racked up over $2 million in NIL deals in first year ... ›
- UT-Austin's 'Frack King' has a vision for clean, geothermal energy ›
- UT Austin debuts new hologram program amid pandemic - austonia ›
- UT admits the most diverse class in the school's history - austonia ›
- A peek inside UT's new $338 million Moody Center - austonia ›
