bob10
20th February 2021, 06:21 PM
Faced with one of the worst crises in the recent history of the state, Republicans have turned their attention away from conditions on the ground and toward the objects of their ideological ire. The issue isn’t energy policy; it is liberals and environmentalists, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a New York congresswoman who was a child when Texas built its first wind farms — and climate activists.
Amid awful suffering and deteriorating conditions, Texas Republicans decided to fight a culture war. In doing so, they are emblematic of the national party, which has abandoned even the pretense of governance in favor of the celebration of endless grievance.
It should be said that there’s no mystery about the collapse of the Texas electrical grid. A once-in-a-century cold front spiked demand beyond the capacity of the system as Texans turned up the heat in their homes and plugged in their space heaters. At the same time, much of the infrastructure for power in the state was disabled by the snow and ice. What do you get when you add a sudden surge of demand to an equally sudden loss of capacity? A crisis, whose roots lie in a decade’s worth of deregulation and cost-cutting, of an energy “independence” that has left the state at the mercy of the elements (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-17/texas-was-warned-a-decade-ago-its-grid-was-unprepared-for-cold'sref=VxZxfD2Y).
Opinion | Ted Cruz’s Excellent Adventure - The New York Times (nytimes.com) (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/opinion/ted-cruz-texas-cancun.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20210219&instance_id=27281&nl=opinion-today®i_id=84534669&segment_id=51960&te=1&user_id=38b653f59d8a788d2b8029d349fb05f1)
Amid awful suffering and deteriorating conditions, Texas Republicans decided to fight a culture war. In doing so, they are emblematic of the national party, which has abandoned even the pretense of governance in favor of the celebration of endless grievance.
It should be said that there’s no mystery about the collapse of the Texas electrical grid. A once-in-a-century cold front spiked demand beyond the capacity of the system as Texans turned up the heat in their homes and plugged in their space heaters. At the same time, much of the infrastructure for power in the state was disabled by the snow and ice. What do you get when you add a sudden surge of demand to an equally sudden loss of capacity? A crisis, whose roots lie in a decade’s worth of deregulation and cost-cutting, of an energy “independence” that has left the state at the mercy of the elements (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-17/texas-was-warned-a-decade-ago-its-grid-was-unprepared-for-cold'sref=VxZxfD2Y).
Opinion | Ted Cruz’s Excellent Adventure - The New York Times (nytimes.com) (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/opinion/ted-cruz-texas-cancun.html?campaign_id=39&emc=edit_ty_20210219&instance_id=27281&nl=opinion-today®i_id=84534669&segment_id=51960&te=1&user_id=38b653f59d8a788d2b8029d349fb05f1)