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The Documentary Podcast

Going Green in the Oil State

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.32.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why has a heavily Republican city in Texas, chock full of climate change sceptics, become the first city in the South to be powered entirely by renewable energy? And why, just a few miles away, has a small town consisting of a lone truck stop and a deserted dirt road they call Main Street, become the richest area in the entire United States? As Donald Trump pulls the US out of the Paris Climate Accords, and talks up the use of fossil fuels, we explore the unexpected reality of the energy industry in the “oil state”.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

In Texas you get a lot of sun and you get a lot of wind.

0:07.0

And where we got where we are in Texas was due to one thing and one thing only money.

0:12.0

Politics aside, everybody loves money. Yeah, it's price baby.

0:17.0

How has a heavily Republican city in the oil state of Texas come to be powered by green energy and why just a few hours away has a

0:29.3

small town consisting of a lone truck stop become the richest area in the entire

0:35.4

United States. No I mean there are many instant millionaires made no doubt. You'll run

0:41.0

across some. This is the surprising story of energy in modern day Texas.

0:46.8

With me Joe Miller. It's a great joke too. It's Friday evening in what locals proudly call the most picturesque town square in Texas.

1:04.0

And the residents of Georgetown, a small city just 30 miles from the state capital of Austin,

1:10.0

which in Texan terms is just a stone's throw away really

1:14.0

are spread out in rows of deck chairs on the courthouse lawn

1:18.0

unwinding to the sounds of the traveling country and bluegrass barn. There's an elderly couple here showing off their barn dance skills on the path that surrounds the green, but most of the other adults

1:34.8

are content to cool down with a cold beer and folding fan, while their children run around

1:41.3

and play catch and spray each other with water pistols. Even though the sun is already setting, it's still hot and humid.

1:57.0

Georgetown is about as Texan as it gets.

2:00.0

The businesses that surround the square from cowboy supply stores to guitar shops to antiques

2:07.1

would be a perfect backdrop for any Western movie

2:12.1

On one corner of the square, there's another reminder of Georgetown's very rich history.

2:17.0

It's a bronze statue commemorating Dan Moody,

2:20.0

a local attorney who was responsible for some of the very first successful convictions of the racist Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

2:32.0

But today Georgetown is making history one girl, boy, kills girl, and boy comes on.

2:32.6

But today, Georgetown is making history once again,

...

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