The High Plains in Texas (an area stretching across 42 counties from Lubbock to Panhandle) normally produces an abundance of cotton and cotton seed. So much so that its yield makes up over a third of the cotton grown in the entire United States. A successful year of cotton production can net this area 5-6 billion dollars per year.

That’s a lot of dollars ($$$).

This cotton is where many of our t-shirts will come from. In order to produce this cotton however, various processes must take place that are not environmentally friendly. For example, for every t-shirt worth of cotton, 30 bathtubs of water are required to grow it. This is a particular problem in Texas because, due to climate change, the state has been experiencing severe droughts. These droughts mean that the farmers have lost over $2 billion in 2022 alone. This drought has also hit corn crops and cattle (due to not having enough crop to feed livestock). 

The cotton industry is one of the most chemically intensive agricultural industries. Bugs love cotton and so farmers spray tons of toxic agrochemicals on their crops. This has an impact on the ecosystem, destroying lots of insects, damaging soil fertility and threatening biodiversity - the complex web of life we all rely on to survive. These chemicals also cause emissions and in particular Nitrous Oxide which is a greenhouse gas that is 300 times worse for global warming than Carbon Dioxide.

It’s not just the extreme heat in Texas that they have to worry about, climate change is causing extreme freezes too. In 2021, a winter storm hit Texas with record breaking low temperatures. Millions of people were left without electricity after blackouts and in some cases, people were without water as the pipes froze solid. This went on for days, caused billions of dollars of damage and tragically led to hundreds losing their lives. 

Extreme freeze as well as extreme heat means adapting to climate change is particularly hard in Texas.

In Galveston (where our t-shirt boards a ship), sea level rise is a big threat. Here it is currently rising at 1 inch a year and this has already led to greater risk of tidal flooding and hurricane storm surges costing billions of dollars to deal with. The Houston-Galveston area has the 5th largest population in the US - that means a lot of people are vulnerable to sea level rise. 40% of the US population live on the coast. Homes, livelihoods and lives are at great risk.