A River of Reflection: Biking South Texas, Part One
Writing by Michael Chase, Drawings by Jenny Hershey
Jacob's family compound in Derby, TX (pop. 50) is a testament to persistence. For seventeen years, a gathering of brothers, a sister, a mother, cousins and an aunt who recently passed has been more than shelter – it has been the family's anchor. Jacob told us about the massive cotton fields that once filled the cleared brush when Texas was a slave state (now replaced by detritus of the oil and gas industry) and shared his own heritage that stretches south across the Rio Grande, where his great-grandfather made the decision to seek a different future in a different land. Jacob's warmth carried an enthusiasm and optimism, as if understanding both the weight of oppression and the courage of migration had taught him something essential about the transformative power of work and enterprise. When Jacob spoke of lifting his family from poverty, his words carried the resonance of two ancestral journeys: those forced across oceans in chains, and those who crossed borders carrying dreams. Jacob's affability was more than mere personality—it was heritage transformed into hope. See more of Jenny Hershey’s drawing on Instagram @deeofo.
In the back of the 7-acre property Jacob and his family share with chickens, dogs, and goats, he showed us an abandoned reservoir drilled by a long-gone oil company. Jacob hopes that by repairing a broken pump he can fill the pool again. Later, after some research on water issues, we realized Jacob’s land sits on the Edwards Aquifer which extends south and west of San Antonio. This aquifer is now at a record low level matched only once before, during the great Texas “Drought of Record” that lasted from 1950-1957. Sadly, Jacob’s reservoir may never fill again.
“The most important news of last week, though you would have had to search hard to find it, was that the carbon dioxide monitoring station at Mauna Loa recorded the biggest single-year growth in co2 in its 66-year-history, rising 3.58 ppm."
-Bill McKibbon
“There is no energy emergency. There is a climate emergency.”
-Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council
Above is the route taken on our latest bicycle exploration. We are at the midpoint of our trip, and plan to spend the next few days exploring the Brownsville region before returning to San Antonio. We have ridden about 400 miles so far.
Taking Stock
We began our latest bicycling trip a few days before President Trump's inauguration in January 2025. The timing has made for a very strange week that we won't soon—if ever—forget. It has felt like watching a horror movie when you already know the ending. Predictably, we are all relearning a lesson: take Trump literally. Yet, it still stung when he signed an executive order about citizenship rights that directly violates the Constitution only an hour after he had sworn an oath to protect it. Let's hope that's not an opening salvo on our Constitution. And it was equally disorienting when he signed an executive order saying there were only two sexes: “men and women,” when science is clear that human biological sex is fluid and diverse. And then he wasted no time laying waste to credible institutions that protect human health. He actually halted hard won price controls on certain critical drugs for Medicare!? WTF?
Trump’s denial of climate science is equally as terrifying in its scope and consequences. We've been here before, when the coal lobbyists and oil executives flooded Washington with their wishlists in 2017. But this time, they're not just dismantling environmental protections but aiming at the foundations of America's clean energy future. Some of us in the climate movement spent the fall warning that Trump meant what he said about destroying what he mislabels the “Green New Deal." But energy analysts and industry consultants insisted the momentum of the clean energy transition was unstoppable. However, as any historian of authoritarianism will tell you, nothing is unstoppable when faced with concentrated power wielded without restraint.
Trump’s "Unleashing American Energy" order isn't just a policy document - it's a declaration of war against the future itself. By freezing billions in clean energy investments, Trump isn't just attacking Joe Biden's legacy; he's attacking solar installers in Nevada, wind turbine manufacturers in Michigan, and battery engineers in Georgia who represent America's real energy independence.
After all, there is no "energy emergency.”America is awash in fossil fuels—we're pumping so much gas that we're literally running out of places to send it. The real emergency is the one we've been facing for decades: a rapidly warming planet and a democracy too corrupted by fossil fuel money to respond. Trump's emergency declaration is like prescribing cigarettes for lung cancer—a "cure" that can only make things worse.
The cruel irony is that while Trump claims to be solving an energy crisis, he's actively sabotaging the actual solution. Enough solar and wind projects are stuck in interconnection queues to power half the country. The real bottleneck isn't a lack of fossil fuels - it's the grid infrastructure needed to carry clean power from where it's generated to where it's needed. At the end of 2024, nearly 2,600 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity were still actively seeking grid interconnection, and roughly 80% of those new projects in the queue are for solar and wind energy. Addressing genuine energy issues would require actual governance, not performative orders designed to reward political donors.
Wind turbines overshadow cattle ranching amidst abandoned oil wells that dot the landscape at Santa Elena, Texas. The land here has been used heavily over the years, and its only purpose is commodification.
We can't say we weren't warned. The only question now is whether our democratic institutions can withstand this assault on our energy future. Make no mistake: this isn't just about kilowatts and carbon dioxide. It's about whether we'll let one man and his cowering political party carry out a vendetta against humanity's last best chance to preserve a livable world.
From a River to a Trickle
The Rio Grande's story is a transformation of decline - from a mighty river flowing from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico to today's diminished waterway that embodies a changing climate. The numbers tell part of the story: the Amistad Reservoir is currently at 26% capacity, and the Falcon at just 15%. But behind these statistics are communities adapting to a new reality that challenges the assumptions of how we live in arid landscapes.
These photos were taken on a bridge that passes over the Falcon Reservoir on Highway 87 at Zapata, Texas. This land used to be underwater. The motel (at which we stayed) before the bridge advertises waterfront views, although those disappeared some years ago.
Along the Texas-Mexico border, this isn't just an environmental crisis – it's a story about human connection to place. As farmers watch their soil crack and cities tighten water restrictions, we're witnessing the collapse of assumptions built during a wetter era. While local leaders focus on immediate solutions and national politicians blame one another in a manner similar to the disgraceful federal response to the LA fires, a deeper truth prevails: we're living through a fundamental shift in Earth's systems driven by carbon emissions. Climate scientists aren't merely predicting the future – they're describing our present, where decreased precipitation is now the norm rather than the exception. And, despite constant attacks, they aren't Cassandras but are guides helping us understand the scope of change needed.
This crisis, like all systemic challenges, contains within it seeds of transformation. It demands we reimagine our relationship with water, cross-border cooperation, and our very understanding of prosperity in a warming world. The communities along the Rio Grande aren't just facing a water shortage – they're on the frontier of developing new ways of living with less, innovations that may soon prove crucial for regions worldwide.
A 2025 graph from the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) website.
Dancing with Scarcity
For three-quarters of a century, water flowed freely between the United States and Mexico. The 1944 International Boundary Waters Commission (IBWC) agreement was elegant in its simplicity: Mexico's springs and streams would flow north while Colorado River waters would journey south. But climate change has rewritten what was once a predictable exchange. Today, reservoirs on both sides of the border gasp in the heat, their levels dropping as rainfall has diminished by more than a fifth since 2000. Underground aquifers, nature's savings accounts filled over centuries, are being drained in decades, while rising temperatures accelerate evaporation from every water surface.
These changes are hurting communities on both sides of the border. From our bicycles, we see withered fields and worried faces. Life here is hardscrabble. In Texas's valley lands, farmers watch their dreams turn to dust or they scramble to plant crops that sip rather than gulp. Watermelon used to be big here, but no longer. Nor are vegetables, sorghum, cotton, corn, citrus or sugarcane. Those crops have been replaced with millet, pigeon peas, cowpeas, chickpeas and some root crops, such as sweet potatoes and yams. And still, agricultural output declines as cities grow while water supplies compete with ever -thirsty shale oil and gas development.
Cities like McAllen and Brownsville are working hard to save water by implementing tiered water pricing and outdoor watering restrictions. Simultaneously, in Mexico, people have protested strongly over water shortages. In Chihuahua, farmers want to keep water for their crops instead of sharing it with the US as required by the treaty. In 2020, protesters took over a dam to stop Mexico from releasing water to the US. Consequently, Mexico has fallen behind on its water deliveries to the US as it uses water downstream of the dam instead of reservoir water as it falls behind on its obligations.
We met a Bangladeshi family of immigrants in Solis, Texas that are homesteading on a few acres of land they recently acquired. They grow vegetables and raise goats, turkeys and chickens. They told us that water used to be free but now they have to buy it because Mexico isn't honoring its water treaty obligations.
People are trying to adapt to having less water. Farmers are using new technology to waste less water, and cities are fixing leaky pipes. People are buying and selling water rights; since the late 1960’s, Sharyland Water has sold Rio Grande water commercially into the communities of Mission, McAllen, and Edinburg. Unfortunately, while this might make money for some people it doesn't create more water. Along the coast, engineers are trying to remove salt from seawater, a process that works, although it is energy intensive and creates toxic brine waste with no current sustainable storage solution.
Outside Laredo's Mercado, we met 9th grader Kevin. He was fundraising for his school’s Mariachi band -The Martin High School Los Tigres del Sur- and an upcoming regional competition. Though new to music - he just learned violin through school and can already play a minuet! Kevin was born in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and now lives in the United States. His striking, thick black hair flows past his shoulders – a style increasingly embraced by young Mexican men as a way to honor their indigenous roots while challenging traditional notions of masculinity and cultural identity. His choice to wear his hair long speaks to a broader movement among his generation to reconnect with their heritage while defining their own path forward. Between warm smiles to passing shoppers, he shared his dream with us: to become a surgeon. We think he’ll succeed! Drawing by Jenny Hershey. Follow her on Instagram @deeofo.
The Energy Echo
As Jenny and I bike along the Rio Grande, our wheels spinning beneath the vast Texas sky, we find ourselves reflecting on more than just the struggle of the Rio Grande. We can see the twin crises of water and energy unfolding like chapters of the same story. The once mighty river to our right runs lower each year, a reflection of our dwindling time to act on climate change. Each rotation of the pedal traces what's being lost and what might yet be saved.
The landscape tells its own truth: nations bound by resources that mock our carefully drawn borders, aging infrastructure and international agreements that creak beneath the weight of a changing climate, and economies that must transform or wither. Yet even as we watch America's environmental protections erode like the mighty river nearby, we see signs of resilience. Farmers in the Valley are pioneering methods to grow food with less water, their ingenuity a beacon for industries that must now reimagine their relationship with carbon and power. The same human creativity that stretches each precious drop of water is reaching toward a cleaner sky.
But we know progress rarely follows a straight line. Less than a week into this new administration, we feel the undertow of fossil fuel interests pulling America backward- whether understood by the electorate or not- threatening to strand our nation on the shores of the clean energy revolution. The same short-sightedness that left us scrambling to adapt our water infrastructure now imperils our national response to climate change and only strengthens China’s potential for economic dominance over America. (More on that in another newsletter).
From our vantage point, we experience the river's story while we watch the same pattern play out in Washington concerning our energy future. Those who cling to old ways risk discovering, too late, the true cost of every ton of carbon added to our warming sky. Those who can master these new rhythms of sustainability will lead the way forward. If not now, this will happen in a few more years after more insurance defaults, crop failures, and countless increasingly expensive weather related natural disasters. Like the river itself, time flows in one direction only. We cannot afford to miss this moment. We must resist the insanity.
In Zapata, Texas, John, an oil rig engineer, settled uninvited at our breakfast table - a fortunate intrusion. Curious about his work, we peppered him with questions. He pulled out his notebook, sketching an oil packer that plunges 18,000 feet below the surface to tap horizontal oil deposits. His life story unfolded alongside his diagrams: first as a decorated Army pilot (evidenced by the ring he wore with pride), then years of technical schooling that led him to managing critical large-scale oil projects. Yet, according to John, his greatest triumph had nothing to do with engineering - it was winning his wife's heart from the star quarterback. We enjoyed him. Yet, he claimed the Biden administration had banned liquified natural gas (LNG) exports, which is why Trump had to declare an “energy emergency”. That is inaccurate. Biden paused the building of new LNG export terminals because we were already exporting record levels of LNG, some to non-free-trade agreement countries such as China, and no one has looked at exporting requirements since 2015.
We are delighted to learn that the excellent editing tools on Substack will work well for us! Because writing here is so much easier and faster than using the clunky Squarespace iPhone editor, we will be able to shorten our posts and make them more frequent. Look for a Part Two about our biking trip in South Texas.
Stay vigilant! Thanks for reading. If you haven’t done so, please subscribe to this blog to follow our next biking trip.
This newsletter was written by Michael Chase, and illustrated by Jenny Hershey. Unless otherwise noted, all material is the copyrighted property of the authors, including all photographs and drawings.
Jennifer Hershey’s drawings can be enjoyed on Instagram @deeofo.
Last year the Biden Administration encouraged the Dept of Energy to pause LNG terminal permits when the energy was going to non-free-trade agreement countries (like China). No one has looked at the requirements since exporting energy became a thing again in 2015. That is what the engineer means, I think, about Biden "banning exports." He didn't. And that pause is soon to be over. We are the largest exporter of LNG and gas -- bigger than Saudi Arabia.
Michael, I think this piece is very engaging and well written.