Looking Forward

Jim hopes Texas will someday achieve a circular economy

To help build the ending of the film about Jim Blackburn, we wanted to get some of his thoughts about what he envisions his initiatives will look like for Texas in the future. We talked about what the carbon removal demand will look like in the nexr decade, how the living shoreline concept he is working on will provide a multitude of protections to the land, it’s inhabitants, and the the health of the environment as a whole. He also pointed out how the living shoreline may encourage the dedication of land up from the water’s edge to more carbon farming over the large footprint of Texas’s expansive family ranches, rather than opening them up for commercial development. It will also be better for all of us who might otherwise end up subsidizing the costs of flood damage brought on by the inevitable erosion from storm and searise damage from climate change.

Jim reminisced about how his wife, Garland, who has been a partner in all of his work, was instrumental in making what might have stayed only a pipe dream, a reality.

It was the early ‘70s at UT where Jim was dating Garland. He was unhappy studying traditional law. She mentioned that her girlfriend's partner had just switched his major to —environmental law. At that time environmental law was brand new. Even the word environmentalism was new. Jim wisely followed Garland's advice. From that early decision, he was set on a path to becoming Texas’s pre-eminent environmental lawyer . . . and the rest, as they say, is history