There have been examples in history of people in or aspiring to be in “leading” positions of authority who have lied by scapegoating minority groups to blame for society’s ills.
The state leaders of Texas like current Governor Greg Abbot and former conservatives may the first “leaders” to spread the big lie of blaming clean renewable energy for a massive winter snowstorm that has hit their state and parts of the midwest and southeast, killing at least 21 people.
On Fox’s Sean Hannity Show, the apparently science-denying Governor Abbott said:
“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis. … It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”
Please click below to view the full exchange.
It did not take long for local authorities in Texas and fact-checkers to question and dismiss Mr. Abbott’s and other conservative policymaker’s anti-science and anti clean energy big lie assertions.
Multiple media sources such as the Washington Post and the Texas Tribune have cited both poor preparations for winter weather (not weatherizing) and a failure of the natural gas energy system as the leading causes for the power outages affecting over three million Texans.
The Washington Post article written by Will Englund noted that other states, regions, and nations that routinely have bad winter weather prepare their energy industries for what could happen.
Texas did not do as much or any of that, choosing less regulation and low prices over preparedness.
The Texas Tribune piece composed by Erin Douglas and Ross Ramsey has cited that natural gas energy delivery failed more than wind turbine energy production.
Politifact wasted no time passing its judgment, saying the Texas power shortage problems were due to a failure of eighty percent of the natural gas and coal energy-producing facilities.
Meanwhile, former Texas Governor and Energy Secretary Rick Perry said that Texans would rather endure blackouts (and freeze apparently) than be part of the National Electric Grid. He wrote on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s blog:
“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”
It is obvious Perry has not taken a recent poll of his fellow suffering, and dying in some cases, Texans to verify his perspective.
Former Texas House Representative and Senatorial and Presidential Candidate Beto O’Rourke blamed the state’s leadership for failing its citizens.
Appearing on MSNBC, Mr. O’Rourke, saying the people in Texas cities and towns were facing “sub-zero temperatures and many of them will not have electricity or power or in many cases water” and “folks are very desperate” to find areas and ways to get warm.
O’Rourke said all of this was avoidable and blamed the deregulation of the Texas electric grid and not weatherizing by the State’s leaders on the suffering Texans are going through.
He also cited the Texas Republican’s leadership with reactionary culture issues and performance combatting COVID and distributing Coronavirus vaccines as other examples of how Texas “nearing a failed state.”
For the science-denying and anti clean energy members of the former Party of Lincoln to use this life-threatening crisis as a way to disparage renewable energy when, as Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote “rotten policy and management are to blame,” is sickening and clearly demonstrates political cowardice, dishonesty, and a failure of planning and leadership.
Texans need leaders that believe in science and clean energy, not divisive political reactionaries who feel the path to power is stoking culture wars, spreading big lies, pursuing the False God of Supply-Side Economics, and dividing the people.
In 2022, Texans need to remember what their leaders failed to do and vote for candidates that will work to never let this winter nightmare happen again.
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Between Florida or Texas, it seems you have to be a complete idiot to get elected to a statewide office. I am sure Abbott and Paxton had emergency power others did not. And then the irony of the hundreds of windmills along I-40 from the New Mexico line thru Amarillo. And a gate on the stateline for all the times the freeway closes due to blizzards. “We didn’t know it gets cold in Texas.”
From Bush the Lesser to Rick (Do these glasses make me look smart?) to famed ladder puller Greg (I got rich by suing my neighbor for his tree falling on me, putting me in a wheelchair) & then heavily supported tort reform) Abbott, Texas has fallen so far since Ann Richards lost re-election.
Whenever my hardcore conservative Texan boss wanted me to visit the corporate office in Rockwall my reply was “Now why would I want to come to Bumf*ck Texas? Then we’d both laugh I’d end up having to go there anyway.