<
https://www.wired.com/story/where-to-find-the-energy-to-save-the-world-geothermal-texas/>
"Jamie Beard was worried. She was at the wheel of a black Toyota Prius,
multitasking at 80 mph down the Hardy Toll Road out of George Bush
Intercontinental Airport. Just before picking me up, she had been interviewed
for a national TV news show. Now, swerving through lanes, she was running
through various shit scenarios: What if something she said pisses off one of
the oil and gas executives she had come to adore, or one of her fellow climate
activists?
As she was ruminating and driving, a Ford F-150 with tires higher than the
Prius is tall squeezed by us in the fast lane, so close that Jamie gripped the
wheel tight to keep the little car steady. One side of her hair was buzz-cut;
the other was a bob. It, like the rest of her, was steady and roiling at the
same time. “Welcome to Texas,” she hollered. A grin spread across the small
oval face that makes her look more 24 than 44, and she turned her attention to
our destination: “Just wait until you see the Woodlands. The cops patrol the
streets on white horses!”
The Woodlands is a self-described master-planned destination about 30 miles
north of downtown Houston, developed in the 1970s by George Mitchell. A Texas
legend. He’s the guy who made it financially viable to fracture rock and
extract natural gas from shale. Now, nearly 50 years on, the suburb is a
bonanza of luxury homes, hotels, woods, condominiums, and fountains with
musical water shows—and offices of some of the biggest oil and gas companies in
the world. Big Oil Palooza. As we sped closer to our hotel, home base for this
whirlwind trip, Jamie started rolling through our tightly packed schedule of
meetings with current and former oil industry folks: drillers, startup
founders, geologists, CEOs at multinational corporations. When she took a
breath, I asked her about the new Earth-piercing technologies that she was
excited about. And I asked her about fracking. Then she remembered her worries.
And got anxious again.
The anxious energy, the worries, they were because Jamie—an energy lawyer and
entrepreneur and lifelong environmentalist (“the kind that would have chained
myself to a tree”)—was desperate not to screw up the delicate plans she’d been
orchestrating for the past six years. They’re big. Too big, and she knew it.
But she was certain that if she could put in all the days and hours and minutes
she could possibly spare, and if she could get the right people talking to each
other and help raise the money for a bunch of startups and better tech, she
might, just might, just maybe help harness all those people to actually,
fabulously, fairly cleanly solve the world’s energy needs. Yeah."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
