Board of Education is only half-right about energy use

ROBERT J. STERN Courtesy

The State Board of Education’s new anti-science campaign ignores the truth about the renewable energy transition.

Recent news articles report that the Texas State Board of Education has asked that writers of the state’s K-12 science textbooks focus on the positive impacts of fossil fuel energy sources such as coal, natural gas and petroleum. They also ask textbook writers to highlight natural fluctuations in Earth’s climate and not to focus on the link between manmade contributions of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and global warming. The board, which is dominated by Republicans, adopted changes proposed by board member, Patricia Hardy.

“If they’re going to tout how wonderful the alternative climate change stuff is, then they need to also say all the things that are not good about it and not just hit on the fossil fuel industry,” Hardy said in an interview with The Scientific American.

Is this just another political battle between conservatives and liberals, or does science support the board and the proposed changes? As a professor of Geosciences at UTD, I have been studying the Earth and

The South — backwoods, not backwards.

Those who stereotype the South as backwards ignore all the civil rights leaders it has produced.

I spent a long time hating the South. I hated the music, I hated the incessant chirping of insects outside my window during the dry heat of the summer, and most of all, I hated the fact that the triple-meat Whataburger exists and that I could get it with a 72 oz. bottle of Sprite without a second look from the employee taking my order.

Anti-Southern language like this only gets worse the further you get into school. Somewhere along the way, discomfort with the pledge morphs into turning your nose up at trailer parks, and suddenly you find yourself in a college classroom arguing the South has how it works for all my 41 years here. For the last four years, I have been teaching a graduate course in sustainable energy. I know something about the related topics of climate change and energy. And as director of UTD Geoscience Studio, I am committed to informing students and the public about Earth science topics like these.

There’s a lot to unpack in the TSBE’s “internal guidance.” First of all, the board’s denial of human-induced climate change is absurd and harmful. It is clear that our climate is changing and that humans are responsible for the increased addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. More needs to be said on this issue, beyond the usual rhetoric that denying human-induced climate change is “politics as usual.” K-12 students should be taught about humaninduced climate change so that they can help fix the problem. But Hardy and the board are partially right; the Earth has experienced many radical changes in climate over its 4.5 billionyear history, from times when the Earth was encased in ice to times when it was warm and humid, and the seas covered where UTD is today. These changes happened long before there were humans around to cause them, so there is some climate change that is not caused by humans.

The board is also correct in that K-12 students should be taught about natural climate change and Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history. But many board members who ask for students to be taught about natural climate change — the evidence for which is preserved in sedimentary rocks — deny what science has established about the age of the rocks that contain this evidence!

Their denial is motivated by a religionbased disbelief of biological evolution, partly because evolution takes a lot of time. Take the evidence that the Earth was encased in ice about 650 million years ago, in a period called “Snowball Earth,” a time before the first fossils of primitive animals appeared. Do they want schoolteachers to explain Snowball Earth without explaining how long ago this happened? Or do they want to jam the Earth’s great natural climate changes into their story of a 6,000 year-old Earth?

If you’re going to teach K-12 students what science has learned about the Earth’s climate history, teach it to them correctly!

Energy is the key to modern civilization.

If you disagree, just imagine your daily routine without electricity and gasoline. Everything that makes modern civilization possible relies on abundant energy, including nothing redeemable about it at all. This works for a little while … right? It’s refreshing to establish distance from this place. There is a level of control in being able to “transcend” the South, but the distance I try to put there has always been hollow.

I think there are so many things about the South that are valuable and worth giving the region a second glance for. Reducing Southern culture to a dramatized caricature erases the rich diversity and history that also exists here.

Hating the same place I call home does not fix the problems that exist here — it only makes them worse.

I do see racism and sexism and extreme nationalism in the South, but there is also the work of Southern civil rights groups and grassroots political campaigns born out of a fierceness unique only to Southern upbringing. Women like Fannie Lou Hamer, Ruby

SOUTH, PAGE 11 light.

“The idea is that emergence sounds like a pleasant thing, like healing from a traumatic experience … [but] I wanted my piece to focus on how that’s not always a beautiful process,” Khalid said. “I wanted to kind of create a piece that made you feel a little creeped out and spooked,

PROFESSOR CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

Force.”

While Phan has been interested in literature since his early days, he said that the language barrier led him to pursue electrical engineering instead. He later went back to literature and teaching in an attempt to give back to the Vietnamese American community and share his experiences.

“I love reading, and I love writing, so when I got here, I felt like people like us have to voice what we’ve been through, so I became a staff writer for a small newspaper in Austin, Texas,” Phan said. “About 10 years later, when I went to work for the U.S. Air Force on a weekend, I and a group of five to six people decided to start our own monthly magazine called U.S. Viet News. I became a chief editor for that magazine for five years. It ran in Austin for almost 10 years, but the paper base was not popular anymore, so we stopped, but I continued to write. I am currently writing for a number of online newspapers. ”

Along with writing about corrup-

SUPERHERO CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 in a desert for the thousandth time when the 1970s introduced the “Superman.”

The superhero genre’s golden age didn’t start until 1998, arguably with the success of Marvel’s “Blade.”

With the following successes of “XMen,” “Spider-Man,” and “The Dark Knight,” the genre’s momentum seemed unstoppable. You know the rest. In 2008, “Iron Man” would begin the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the flagship of the superhero genre, which climaxed with 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” arguably the end of the genre’s golden age. While there have been several successful films that came after, like DC’s “The Batman” and Sony’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” the quality just isn't the same.

“Avengers: Endgame” felt like the appropriate final chapter to the genre. This is obvious considering supposed

Bridges and Diane Nash are all examples of Southern women who fought for Civil Rights in the heart of the South. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Jane Roe from Roe v. Wade, the woman who provided so many people around the country bodily autonomy, was a Texan. I don’t think it’s an accident that today, the five women who are suing over life-threatening pregnan- so there’s a little figure I used to shine through multiple layers of black and white paper to kind of create the effect of a figure rising out of a swamp.

It’s a little unnerving, and the figure’s eyes follow you as you walk past just to kind of create a sense of the paranoia you feel when you're going through something very difficult.”

Khalid said that her experience organizing and participating in the tion and sovereignty in newspapers, Phan also hosted radio shows, namely the Saigon Broadcasting Television Network, as a means to connect with the Vietnamese population in San Antonio. Phan proclaims himself a civil activist and is heavily involved with the Vietnamese American community, especially in Texas.

“I am the president of the Vietnamese American Community in the USA, and I have been in that leadership role for many years, and I am always active in voter registration, encouraging Vietnamese Americans to vote,” Phan said. “I’m seriously involved with the advancement of freedom of religion for the Vietnamese. We help write a lot of violation reports for the United Nations, for the U.S. Committee on International Religious Foundation.”

Phan, who works at Dallas College as a career coach, is currently teaching VIET 2310, Vietnamese for Heritage Speakers, at UTD for the first time in his career. Phan added that the class is being offered again after over 20 years.

“Dr. Hempfield said he got a lot of interest from Vietnamese American blockbusters like 2022’s “Doctor Strange: Multiverses of Madness,” 2022’s “Thor: Love & Thunder” and 2023’s “Ant-Man: Quantumania” fell short as critical, audience or financial failures. Since 2019, DC has only produced “The Suicide Squad” and “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” and while both were fantastic, they were essentially remakes of previous failures that will likely be erased along with the DC Extended Universe. For independent superheroes, most people can only look towards “Invincible” and the later seasons of “The Boys,” which weren’t even feature films.

The two genres share a core trend of audience fatigue. The Western genre pumped out up to 140 movies per year between the 1940s and 1960s. Between 1998 and 2019, the superhero genre has seen 235 superhuman vigilante films, with over 52 of them belonging to Marvel. I’m exhausted just thinking about watching 235 films, and I’m not even including the count- cies are Texans. So much change is a product of Southern value in loyalty, hard work and determination.

Maybe this is just an overly hopeful look at the harsh reality of Southern ideology. I still walk by the “pro-life” tables and groups picketing on campus trying to pander their harmful agendas. But I can’t help but think about a famous quote from late author James Baldwin.

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly exhibition has been enriching in not only opening doors to non-STEM topics but also as a creative outlet.

“Everyone who can visit the exhibition should definitely visit, because it’s going to be up for one month,” Khalid said. “It will be fun, and there’s so much to see and so many talented artists that worked on their pieces, so definitely go check it out.” students who don’t speak Vietnamese at home but want to learn Vietnamese,” Phan said. “He asked me if I wanted to teach that class, and I said ‘Oh my God, I’d love that,’ so he and I talked, and we built a curriculum for the class. Hopefully in the future we can grow Vietnamese into a permanent program that we can provide to UTD students, particularly Vietnamese Americans, but also to whoever wants to learn Vietnamese.”

Phan is currently involved in a project to resettle 1,000 Vietnamese refugees as part of a sponsorship starting in June. He said that he tried to raise awareness within the Vietnamese American community to help them to form sponsorship groups as well.

“I greatly appreciate this country,” Phan said. “It gave us a free space to really grow and to become a good person. As American citizens, we are also responsible for bettering our living environment, so I’m involved in a lot of projects to make sure we continue to give this gift of freedom. And hopefully this gift continues to give to a new generation of Americans that come to this country.” less TV shows. After 23 years in the limelight, it is easy to admit superhero films are predictable, formulaic money grabs. While there have been hundreds of superhero films outside Marvel, the universal flagship was the MCU, and with “Avengers: Endgame” feeling like the last chapter for most audiences, James Gunn’s new DC plan might just revive the genre like Spaghetti Westerns did. However, it is uncertain whether Gunn can pull off the same miracle he did with “Guardians of the Galaxy” or “Suicide Squad.” for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually,” Baldwin said.

I think there are still masterpieces that have yet to come, but my hopes aren’t as high as they used to be either. What we can learn from Westerns is that it is not quantity we need to keep the genre going, it is inventive challenges to pre-existing formulas and creative decisions that help movies stand out past pretty faces and CGI nano suits. Otherwise, maybe superheroes are destined to go the way of the Western.

Replace “America” with “the South” and you’ve got a succinct summary of the posture I think self-proclaimed anti-Southerners should have toward the place we call home. Sustainable, long-term change in the region can only happen when we accept the flaws of the system we live in and choose every day to make the South better for ourselves and the people around us.

LATINX CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9 homophobia. These stories use rich and divisive storytelling to bring light to the nature of poverty and the frustrations of those in Latinx communities.

“Vicenta,” a 2020 Argentinian film, documents the odyssey of a malnourished 19-year-old Latinx woman seeking to abort a pregnancy from nonconsensual incest. Despite the legal status of abortion for rape victims in Argentina, she is faced with constant obstacles produced by fearful doctors and a deceptive legal system. What might surprise viewers is the medium of this film, as the entire story is recounted by claymation as a poetic voice speaks over silent dolls. It is a powerful plea in the face of recent

NAP CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9 sleep.”

To support students, some universities like Texas A&M offer sleeping pods or designated areas for sleep between classes for students who don’t live on campus or don’t have time to return home for a short nap. However, UTD does not have any designated sleeping spots on campus. All that is currently offered outside hammock spaces is educational programs and aid by the Student Wellness Center.

“In those ways we can promote sleep wellness, but we can’t hold the person’s hand and force them to go to sleep,” Manriquez said. “I know that other schools like bigger universities and small universities too have sleeping pods specifically for students who need to take a nap on campus because they can’t go to their dorm easily or they live very far away from campus. And I think that’s a great resource to have.”

However, commuters and poor sleep schedules don’t have to lose hope yet, because there are still plenty of makeshift nap spots across campus.

The couches on the third floor of

ENERGY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 electricity, and right now, that energy is dominated by fossil fuels. Anyone who advocates immediately dispensing with fossil fuels is advocating for civilization to collapse. This is not a sane approach. Instead, we want it to improve civilization in many ways, including addressing human-induced climate change. The importance of cheap, reliable energy to human progress cannot be overemphasized. Modern civilization took off with the industrial revolution, which was made possible by an energy transition from muscles to coal. This happened over several decades in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A second energy transition, from coal to petroleum, occurred in the first half of the 20th century. A third energy transition to nuclear energy began in the ‘70s and ‘80s but has stalled due to safety concerns. The fourth energy transition to renewable energy is now underway. Energy transitions take decades to legal attacks on bodily autonomy.

“Drowning Letters,” a 2020 documentary from Spain, told the heartbreaking true story of the immigration crisis across the Mediterranean sea using the letters of those who crossed or died trying. It follows both the exasperating missions to save those shipwrecked across closed borders and the violence that erupts between a thin line separating the law and the desperate. Today, this immigration crisis is still ongoing, and the United Nations reports that last year, migrants were at even greater risk of dying than before.

UTD wasn’t the only community watching these movies for the festival. According to Mooney, this event was shared as far away as Missouri.

“A professor of Spanish at Saint Louis University sent [the films] to her students, and she told me the students accomplish, so we are going to need fossil fuels for a long time as we invent and adapt renewable energy.

Founders are lifesavers. With rarely any noise to disturb during daylight hours, it’s a convenient pit stop in the middle of campus where most people will not bother you. However, in the evening, you are more than likely to be awakened by any number of dancing groups or private events.

The fourth floor of the library is also a nice spot to nap if you don’t snore or rely on alarms to wake up. It’s a little uncomfortable because the space is reserved for only the most studious, but if you bring a jacket to use as a pillow, you can get plenty of rest. You can also technically rent out a free study room for silence, but the chairs aren’t exactly made for comfort.

The ECSW second floor study lounge is another great place to nap if you can secure lounge seats. In the morning and noon, these spots are rarely noisy, but they are scarce as a popular study spot for the same reason. They are close to parking and mostly quiet when everyone else is in class.

The best spot, however, is only accessible if you have a hammock. If your sleepless soul doesn’t already own one, you can rent one at Recreation Center West for $5 a day.

The good news for UTD students is that Texas is a key player in the transition to renewable energy. Texas leads the nation in oil and natural gas production, and we lead the US in wind energy and will soon lead in solar energy. Texas is truly the “Energy State.”

Four points need emphasizing. First, the electrical grid will be increasingly important as electric vehicles and wind and solar energy proliferate. Reliability of the grid will become paramount because renewable energy poses special challenges to grid stability, and wind and solar energy are intermittent sources of electricity. We will always need electricity from other sources to fill these gaps. Batteries can store excess electricity from solar and wind, but we are a long way from having enough battery storage to do away with fossil fuels or nuclear power.

Secondly, there is a major transition happening in the mix of fossil fuels used to generate Texas’ electric- watched it. So, we went abroad and serve a community, not only our community, but other people from other universities and other colleagues [that] saw the films,” Mooney said.

Given the success of the festival for its first year and the packed room for the movies, Mooney expects and hopes that even more will attend when the Latinx/Hispanx Film Festival becomes an annual occurrence.

“I think [these films] helps us to develop empathy and understanding or different cultures races and ethnicities,” Mooney said. “But I was also surprised how bold these students were when they were selecting the film, and I was very happy about it.

I think the universities are in the right place to have difficult conversations and talk about social issues in a safe environment.”

Hammock Grove, next to Parking

Structure 1 and behind the library, is perfect in good weather, especially in spring with warm sunlight, chirping birds and nobody to bother you from feeling fully refreshed. At most, you’ll only see water scientists and a few other people looking for a place to sleep or read alone. If that’s too far away, then look no further than Phase 8’s hammocks in the center courtyard, which go unused outside nightly volleyball games.

Of course, the best place to sleep is in a bed. Students should plan on at least eight hours of undisturbed sleep, and a nap can’t be a substitute for that. If you need to take a nap, consider only getting 20 to 30 minutes of shuteye to refresh and prevent disturbing your sleep cycles.

“It's a big issue for a lot of college students, including UTD students,” Manriquez said. “Some people forget to prioritize themselves and their wellness, it’s so much more important because that includes like social wellness, emotional wellness, physical wellness, mental wellness, just a holistic area of wellness. And sleep is a big contributor to that.” ity. Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels and releases the most carbon dioxide per unit of electricity generated. Luckily, coal is being replaced by plants burning cleaner natural gas and renewables.

A third point is that if we want to move faster to remove fossil fuels from the energy mix used to power the grid, we need to use more nuclear power, which produces no carbon dioxide. There are challenges with nuclear energy, but the technology is improving rapidly. We didn’t stop flying airplanes because early ones crashed. Our faith in technology paid off, and now air travel is the safest mode of transportation. We can expect similar benefits from improving nuclear energy.

Finally, UTD needs to teach more about energy at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Students at UTD, a leading university in the Energy State, should be leading our energy transition and help the Texas Board of Education improve K-12 climate and energy education!