Greetings. I am a voting constituent in rural west Texas.
Is there anything better than watching the national news and seeing your state looking like a Third World country?
Here in my small town, we had rolling blackouts. My household was without water for 3 days. And we’re the more fortunate ones. We have a fireplace. Our entire town’s water supply was lost earlier today. It is back, at a reduced volume, with a boil before use order. The town has been virtually closed down.
As a generational Texan I know this is an extreme weather event. But we all had ample warning. We count on leadership to take care of their citizens.
Texas has failed again. We failed at Covid action. Now we’ve failed at keeping the lights on. And we all see why. Not because of the scary notion of ‘the green new deal’, but because of our outsized notion of what constitutes independence. Our grid is an example. We are independent of federal oversight. But I expect millions of Texans were wishing about now that someone cared enough to provide oversight to make sure the system would work in an emergency.
It seems a case of risk management. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe no one will realize that appropriate measures were not taken to winterize equipment. It’s all about cheap energy with little thought to infrastructure.
We see the limits of an unregulated business mentality when we look out our window at a dark, silent, sad town. And just wait till the thaw comes.
So please don’t go out and embarrass our state further by declaring it all the fault of wind turbines and solar panels and supply chains and what other deflecting excuses you come up with.
The whole world sees this for what it is. The inability of our Republican government to really, truly care about the lives of the people they are supposed to lead.
Caring is such a Socialist concept. And way too scary for you and yours.
This analysis may seem harsh. But you wanted the job. And taking responsibility comes with any job. So figure out why all this happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Because climate change is real. Deal with it.
