The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality - what a joke. In

Hear the cry of Wendy Davis, spoken not in jest but in fury and sorrow: “The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality—what a joke. In my district, we caught them lying to us about the results of air quality studies in the Barnett Shale. They are playing with the health and safety of our communities, and we are going to tell them that is not acceptable.” These words strike with the force of a prophet’s rebuke, a voice calling out against betrayal. For what greater treachery can there be than to veil the truth about the air we breathe, the very breath of life?

When Davis speaks of the Commission, she unmasks the corruption that festers when institutions meant to guard the people bow instead to the pressures of industry and greed. The Barnett Shale, a land rich in gas, became also a land of danger, where drilling and extraction released poisons into the sky. The guardians of the people’s welfare, entrusted with truth, gave instead deception. They painted the air as clean when it was tainted, and thus placed profit above the lives of mothers, fathers, and children. Her words burn with the ancient anger reserved for those who break their covenant with the people.

This tale is not new to history. Recall the tragedy of Minamata in Japan, where for decades officials and corporations denied the poisoning of waters by mercury. Fishermen and their families grew sick, their children born with twisted limbs, yet officials silenced the truth to protect wealth. Only when the suffering became too visible to hide did the world awaken to the scale of the betrayal. Wendy Davis’s words stand in the same tradition: to call out lies, to defend the innocent, to declare that health and safety are sacred and cannot be gambled away.

Her condemnation is more than political—it is moral, spiritual, almost sacred. To lie about the air is to sin against the breath of life itself. To poison the air is to strike at the unseen covenant that binds man to nature. The ancients believed that air was spirit—pneuma, prana, the breath that animates all beings. When leaders dismiss the poisoning of the air, they are not only endangering bodies but offending the sacred order of existence.

The lesson is carved in fire: never trust institutions blindly, for even those sworn to guard may fall to corruption. Instead, vigilance must rise from the people themselves. Communities must demand truth, must hold leaders accountable, must remember that silence in the face of lies is complicity. For the health of the land and the safety of the people are treasures greater than gold, and no wealth extracted from the shale or the soil can equal them.

Take then these practical teachings: speak out when injustice is hidden. Question the reports given by those in power, especially when the stakes are life itself. Stand united as communities, for the voice of the many is harder to silence than the cry of the lone. Protect the air and the water as if they were your children, for indeed they nourish you as a mother nourishes her own.

Let Wendy Davis’s words echo into the future: “That is not acceptable.” Carry this phrase as a shield against every deception, every betrayal. Teach it to your children, so they may rise with courage. For though officials may falter and corporations may deceive, the people, when awakened, are mightier than both. And if they hold fast to truth, then even the poisoned air may be cleansed, and the covenant with nature restored.