How Landman undermines Texas's sustainable future

storytelling and culture creation in Texas and its wide ranging impact on our current politics, in two parts.

If I had a grand unified theory, it would be this: almost every force in American political life can be understood by watching television. Every major political event, theme, and current is the progeny of something first played out on TV.

I offer two case studies to support the point. The first is the devastating impact of the mythologizing series Landman, and the second is an examination of the cultural scaffolding supporting the rise of Texas Representative James Talarico.

First up: Landman.

Landman vs. ERCOT

If you have spoken to me at any point in the last six months, there is a decent chance I have tried to convince you to watch Landman. It is incredible television, but more importantly, it is a near perfect piece of American mythmaking, or rather, mythology reinforcement. Landman is a story about power, masculinity, love, and most centrally, the total, unquestionable moral rightness of Texas oil, and only Texas oil.

But here is the thing. Texas is not only an oil state. In fact, Texas is the leading producer of renewable energy in the United States. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas manages the flow of electric power to more than 27 million customers, representing about 90 percent of the state’s electric load. At any given moment you can check the fuel mix powering Texas, and on many days a striking share comes from wind and solar.

See below for today’s mix as of 12:20 ET, Texas is running on 27.3% solar and 40.0% wind.

The collective political and cultural imagination insists not only that Texas is powered by oil, but that oil is the only viable or reasonable economic investment. By any honest accounting, Texas is also a renewable energy powerhouse.

And yet the myth persists, because myths do not yield to spreadsheets. They yield to stories.

Part of why I suggest, bully and prod people to watch Landman is to watch this scene:

It is incredibly well constructed and sharply written. It is also riddled with inaccuracies and outright falsehoods about how renewable energy works. The problem is not that a television show is inaccurate. The problem is that Landman shapes opinions and political outcomes in place of facts.

Landman is simply the latest cultural product to validate the logic of the petroleum industry. When Dallas premiered on CBS on April 2, 1978, it introduced the world to J.R. Ewing, the scheming, irresistible oil baron who became one of the most indelible characters in American television history. The show pulled nearly 19 million viewers in its first full season and only grew from there, at one point topping 90 million Americans, more than half of all U.S. households. Dallas ran for 14 seasons and was broadcast in more than 57 countries.

Landman builds on that cultural inheritance for a new generation. Together, these shows and the tradition they represent have helped cement, in the average American mind, an image of Texas that is not just outdated but flatly contradicted by reality.

We know that Americans do not form political opinions based on data. If they did, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would have been president. They form them based on which stories they believe to be true. Landman, with its scale and emotional clarity, offers a far more compelling story than anything pro clean energy leaders have managed to produce.

You can see this contradiction playing out in real time as we watch the massive political retreat from a carbon free future, as well as changing public sentiment. Texas is a state that stands to gain enormously from renewable energy investment is represented by politicians who loudly celebrate federal rollbacks of clean energy support, even as solar and wind investment pours across the state.

These values shifts aren’t isolated to Texas. After decades of slow but positive, bipartisan movement towards renewable energy investment, there was a major shift toward fossil fuels among Republicans following the 2020 election and in the years since. According to Pew Research:

Since 2020, the share of Republicans who say they prioritize developing renewable energy over expanding fossil fuels is down 27 percentage points, from 65% to 38%. There has been a corresponding 26-point increase in the share of Republicans who give priority to developing oil, coal and natural gas (from 35% to 61%).

Landman is based on a hit podcast initially released in 2019 called Boomtown, a narrative, serialized show about the 21st century Texas oil boom.

Americans have had decades of cultural production reinforcing the logic of unrestricted and unrepentant drilling. There have been high profile projects that advanced a pro environment agenda, but not nearly enough, and certainly not with the same emotional force or narrative appeal. When I try to understand how, in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus, relentless reporting, and lived experience, we continue to tolerate elected officials and civic leaders who deny the urgency of change, I find myself returning to television for the answer.

Until the dominant cultural offerings tell different stories, we will remain in the same paradigm.

Where are the shows that make renewable energy feel aspirational? Where are the characters who embody that future? As Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson often asks, where is the climate romantic comedy? Where is the story people actually want to believe?

Thanks for reading. Part Two will come early next week, another Texas phenomenon I cannot stop thinking about: the rise of James Talarico and the culture of Christian TV.

Have a great weekend,

Carri