During his time representing Fort Worth in the Texas House, Lon Burnam recalls a member of the governor’s staff issuing a stern warning: Keep the words “climate change” in a piece of legislation, and the bill will be “dead on arrival.” A lot has changed since Burnam, a Democrat, left office in 2015 and became the chair of the Tarrant Coalition on Environmental Awareness. In a “remarkable shift from the past,” a University of Houston study published in December found that 81% of Texans agree that climate change is happening. That result, from a survey of 500 Texans conducted in October, now mat…
