A message from Heather Houser, outgoing Chair of Planet Texas 2050.

Climate change is straining our natural and built environments as well as our social networks. Add to that a growing population — Texas’ numbers are expected to double in the next 30 years — and cities throughout our region are facing water scarcity, inadequate infrastructure, and other strains.

The dominant languages of climate change have been scientific, technological and economic. But these languages alone cannot speak to the socially contingent beliefs and values that are at the root of human activities altering our planet. We need the knowledge the humanities and arts produce to prevent narratives such as Bacigalupi’s from becoming our reality. We must build common languages between architecture and archaeology, poetry and paleoclimatology, government and genetics.