Texas’ top energy regulator calls proposed science textbooks ‘woke environmental curriculum’

LEARN MORE: Advocates urge Texas school board to approve new textbooks describing climate change

The Republican-led board of trustees, which controls the state’s textbooks, has long played an outsized role in the nation’s textbook industry as publishers prepare their materials for market acceptance Texas massif.

In a letter to the board on November 1, Christian criticized the book’s depiction of fossil fuels.

Despite what the mainstream media reports, the climate change debate is far from settled, as none of the catastrophic events they predict have occurred. [sic] over the past 20 years, he wrote. These doomsayers use the bogeyman of CO2 and the threat of apocalypse to scare people into submission.

There is scientific consensus that the burning of coal, oil and natural gas contributes to global warming. The past eight years have been the hottest on record, and people around the world have experienced extreme heat, storms and droughts that scientists say are becoming more intense due to climate change .

The 15-member State Board of Education will decide next week whether to approve textbooks as properly teaching the state’s science standards, which they set in 2020. The board is scheduled to hear from public testimony on textbooks Tuesday before voting.

Local school districts are responsible for selecting and purchasing textbooks, but they often choose from the list approved by the school board.

Christian is one of three members of the state’s railroad commission, which, despite its name, oversees the state’s powerful oil and gas industry. He worked in the Texas House before running for office and he owns a financial services business.

In his letter to Christians, he trumpeted the positive impact of the fossil fuel industry on the Texas economy and the people who hold these jobs. For many years, he said, fossil fuels have driven economic growth around the world, lifting a billion people out of global poverty.

I would encourage the board to choose books that promote the importance of fossil fuels for energy production and reject books that promote a green energy and net zero emissions agenda, he said. declared, attributing these ideas to a woke environmental agenda pushed by people or organizations such as President Joe. Biden, Al Gore, the United Nations or the World Economic Forum.

The letter was addressed to board Chairman Keven Ellis, a Republican from Lufkin, who did not respond to a request for comment.

RELATED: Conservative PragerU courses are not approved for Texas schools, as board members claim

Despite a shift to the right this year by the state board, including headlines this summer of a rumored plan to introduce conservative PragerU courses in schools, there has been virtually no resistance to the regarding science textbooks at summer board meetings.

But conservative lawmakers and advocates in recent months have begun speaking out against the measures, said Emily Witt, a spokeswoman for the Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning education advocacy group.

The Christians’ letter sounded the alarm for the TFN, Witt said, recalling last year: when the TFN supported draft versions of new social studies standards, before a wave of activists right-wingers attacked them when they were woke, Marxist and anti-American and the board of directors was sidelined. them.

There’s something that at least begins to teach the truth about a number of areas, and then the SBOE tears it all apart, Witt said. This seems really frustrating. The next step is simply to adopt textbooks that teach children the truth about climate change and evolution and other science topics.