Texas, I reckon, is starting to doubt the wisdom of a one — party system.
As millions freeze and go without potable water, the rest of the country is wondering how it got so bad in the “lone star” state. Well cowpokes, the short answer is Texas decided that free markets were more important than common sense.
God predictably disagreed and decided to gave Texas an object lesson in the benefits of mutual aid while exposing conservative dogmas as hokum.
God’s lessons for Texas:
A. Disdain for regulations means people live in crap buildings with crap utility service. Why build a home or a power plant for extreme weather in Texas? It never gets cold there! Doing it right would cost 12% more. Texas is big. 12% of the Texan housing market is lots of money saved! But now, rich people in Texas are suddenly wishing they had better building codes (aka “regulations”) because lax codes have ruined their leather furniture and forced them to face what life is like for people with unreliable housing.
B. Disdain for science resulted in crappy assumptions and governance. Even kids know that climate change is complex and that global warming means extreme changes in weather patterns. In the last 10 years the planet got significantly warmer on average, but it also started to snow in the Sahara with unusual frequency. Texans get minimal exposure to reality based climate science because their economic interests run counter to the scientific facts. Yes, the world is getting warmer because we all burn Texas’ petrochemicals. But it can still get cold in Texas.
C. Disdain for the federal government resulted in no margin of safety — The powerful folks in Texas prefer death to government regulations. Subsequently, they can’t buy energy on the “free market” because it just isn’t “free” enough for them. It’s true that it takes a special sort of stupid to run out of energy in Texas. That stupid is epitomized in the “we sell energy to others, we don’t ever buy energy” trope that led Texas to go it alone and not interconnect the ERCOT network.
D. The eschatological end-times preppers of Texas were woefully unprepared and the state government overestimated the number of Texans who could afford to be preppers. Anyone who has been to a rave in the woods knows you need multiple containers of fuel to make a generator work and that you wont be able to purchase fuel when the gas station has no electricity or is miles away. They also know that people need water to live, and can’t be counted on to bring it with them. So, if you want your ravers to survive the dance party you will need fuel AND water. Extra bullets are not as useful as fuel. Texas republicans were willing to roll the dice on whether their “self reliant” voters were prepped for disaster, but conservative cowpoke voters don’t spend much at rave parties in the woods. Or camping.
E. Fear of government is deadly in times of climate chaos. Texas officials say they needed to cut power, or else… the state would have gone without power for months? This is the second largest state in the US. ERCOT officials say they were within minutes, or seconds, of a months-long blackout because of grid overload. If Texas were to go without power for months it would be a nationwide economic catastrophe.
F. Let my people go vote for democrats. Texas’ GOP is about to start blaming the Jews of Enron for Texan tribulations because if they can’t find a scapegoat, Texan voters will start to act rationally.
We can expect the federal government to exert more control over Texas energy markets in the coming months, but right now, Texans are suffering because of the inane ideological excess of Texas’ elected officials.