Texas is the worst Carbon Dioxide emitter in the United States, while also being the second largest state. A third of the emissions of carbon are from transportation. Texas as you know is a rather large state so bigger cities are more spaced out from each other and as a result more gas is needed to fuel the cars for these longer distance emitting more carbon into the air. If you live in Texas, you may not know that over half of the the population living in Texas are breathing air that is unsafe. Even though this is a serious health hazard, the government has not made any efforts to reduce our carbon output; Texas is still one out of 15 states without a climate action plan in place or even under consideration. As students we can write to government officials or organize a group to petition for the government to do something about the dangerous output of carbon and get major oil companies to cut down on their emission.
http://www.newsweek.com/texas-worst-co2-emitter-93371

Katy I think you brought up a really good point when you talked about how cars are an unfortunate necessity in many places both in Texas as well as the US. I know that many of us would much rather take other, more environmentally friendly, transportation options but are limited by our schedule requirements and the current public transportation state in the US. I agree that in the meantime it's extremely important that we look at ways to minimize the harmful ecological effects of driving ourselves around.