Yet Another Capitalist Failure in Texas
~~ Written by dmorista ~~
Summary Statement
The events over the last 10 days in Texas take on a special significance due to the prominent position of Texas as an Exemplar of the Right’s phonied up “Free Market Economics” and its supposed advantages for society. The extreme Laissez Faire / Crony Capitalist socio-economic system of Texas was completely culpable; not only for the recent collapse of the Electrical Generation and Distribution System, that provides power to about 95% of the state’s population; but also for the collapse of the hundreds of Water Treatment Systems that serve just over half of the 30 million people in the state; as well as the associated break-down of food distribution and the temporary closure of many grocery stores. The Texas Electrical Generation and Distribution System broke down for one simple reason; it was not built to withstand severe cold weather. The privately owned for profit companies did not spend the money to build their facilities to that standard in the first place, and also did not want to spend the even larger amounts of money necessary to “winterize” their equipment by retrofitting it; even after repeated warnings that it was vulnerable. The energy deregulation regime in Texas ended any power for state regulators to require that the electrical generation and distribution system be winterized or otherwise improved, they could only suggest that those measures be taken. This was true of all the components of the electrical system, including natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, and solar. These types of power generation facilities regularly operate without problems in much colder places, even than Texas was during the recent wintry spell, places like Canada, Siberia, Germany, and Iowa. (1)
Right-wing politicians and commentators immediately tried to blame “renewable power sources”, the Green New Deal, and even New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, but that storyline did really take hold. The final Death Toll from the unprecedented state power system collapse and associated problems will not be known for weeks, but it is certain to keep increasing. As of Sunday, February 21, 2021 there were reports of 58 deaths in Texas. And then to top it all off, many electricity customers already were, or will be, sent bills in the Thousands of Dollars (or have already had the money to pay those astronomical bills deducted from their accounts), for the power they did get over the last week. These outlandish electricity prices are being charged because to stay online some utilities bought power on a special ERCOT spot market that saw prices go up as high as 150 to 200 times or even more than the usual rate. Meanwhile, 10 of the 15 executives on the board at the quasi-public agency that manages the Texas Grid (the now notorious quasi-public Electrical Reliability Council of Texas {ERCOT} ), continue to collect their 6 figure salaries The Chairwoman of ERCOT pulls in $883,000 a year, for anywhere from 5 - 15 hours of work a week. There are reports that 5 board members have resigned effective February 25, 2021, the day before the Texas Legislature will hold hearings on the Power System Collapse. And to add the final Capitalist wrinkle, celebrating the sky-high profits garnered during the Power disaster Roland Burns, the Chief Financial Officer at Dallas based Comstock Resources Inc., exulted in a call to shareholders that “This week is like hitting the jackpot with some of these incredible prices … Frankly, we were able to sell at super premium prices for a material amount of production”, (this particular outrageous comment originally reported by the Dallas Morning News on February 17, 2021). This set of interrelated crises and debacles were entirely caused by the unregulated “Wild West” Capitalist arrangements that prevail in the Texas energy system. Texas deregulated its electrical system in 1999 and during the following 21+ years opened it up to the worst sorts of speculators, swindlers, and flim-flam operators of the organized corporate type. The cold weather from the storm of February 2021, merely blew over the flimsy structure of public services in Texas. This whole debacle, that is not over yet by a long-shot, was a completely Capitalist caused disaster. The question really is, why aren’t the owners of the various fatally flawed Electricity Generation and Distribution companies being paraded on TV in Orange Jumpsuits, shackled hand and foot, while being marched into court to be charged with 58 charges of second degree murder or at least 1st degree manslaughter. In addition, currently the power companies have denied culpability for property damage caused by their negligence; why are the power companies not liable for damages? The first major lawsuit for $100 million, was filed by Maria Pineda whose 11 year old son Cristian froze to death in his bed in their trailer. Many other lawsuits will be filed in the near future. (2)
The Ongoing Crisis
Electricity has now been restored to most customers, according to Julian Castro, former Mayor of San Antonio, as of about 8:00 AM February 22 there were still about 300,000 Texans without electricity. This follows nearly a week of disruption that saw a peak of 4.5 million people without power. At the peak of the crisis over 15 million Texans were living with “boil water” advisories or had no water service at all; this number had come down to around 10 million as of Sunday, February 21st, and was further reduced to 7.9 million by Monday evening, February 22. An e-mailed statement from the Texas Department of Environmental Quality on the evening of February 23 stated: “As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, 44 Public Water Systems are non-operational, affecting 18,019 Texans. 1,205 PWSs are on a boil water notice, affecting 3,422,760 Texans. 712 boil water notices have been rescinded. 204 counties are reporting PWS issues,”. As of 10:00 AM February 24th, there were still 2,270,497 Texans living in areas where the water supply service has issued “boil water” advisories. That is according to the latest figures from the Texas Commision on Environmental Quality. At the worst point of this event millions of those people, under “boil water” advisories, did not have the electricity or gas service with which to boil their water. Most grocery stores were stripped bare by panic buying in the early stages of the crisis. The grocery stores remained pretty much empty for the duration of the storm and its aftermath, road conditions and lack of power or water at many stores prevented a recovery in inventories Only now is the situation with the supply of food starting to stabilize and the process of restocking the food supply is now (Monday February 22) underway. As of this writing on Wednesday morning of February 24th shelves in the grocery stores were still bare, in at least some areas of the state and the estimate is it will take over two weeks to get back to “normal”. (3)
As stated in the first paragraph above: It was the private profit driven capitalist choice not to spend the necessary funds to build and/or install equipment that could withstand severe winter storms in the first place and/or failing that, to retrofit and “winterize” the entire Electricity Generation and Distribution System of the state. It was the failure to carry out either one or the other of those two actions that caused the collapse. Retrofitting equipment is always more expensive than building it the right way the first time. And furthermore, after the Electrical Power began to fail, the State of Texas’: “Texas Division of Emergency Management failed to provide accessible and life-saving updates on outages and inclement weather”. Despite the gravity of the situation for the population of the state, various right-wing figures, such as Texas Governor Greg Abbot and former Governor and Secretary of Energy during the Trump Regime, Rick Perry, found the time to appear on Fox News or other right wing outlets and try to shift the blame off of themselves, the private power companies, or ERCOT. Right-wing forces have had untrammeled control over all public policy in Texas for well over 20 years now. What we have seen over the past week is the inevitable result of allowing Private Capitalists to make the decisions that maximize their profits, regarding critical infrastructure that the overall population depends on for their survival and well-being. In their relentless pursuit of the maximization of profit, the various components of ERCOT are totally culpable for causing this statewide debacle. What is more there are reports that the ERCOT grid operators narrowly averted a total catastrophic breakdown of the grid, by “seconds or minutes”, that would have taken months to repair, and that would have left millions of people without power for several months. Besides that there have been billions of dollars of property damage inflicted on the people who depended on the system to work safely. And does it really need to be said, the worst conditions occurred in poor neighborhoods, and those are primarily African-American, Hispanic, and there are plenty of poor white areas as well. (4)
General Background
Over the last 30 years Texas has become the “flagship” state of the Far-Right’s Capitalist Offensive against the legacy of the American Social Democracy; the surviving remnants of The New Deal, The Great Society, and even the Nixonian environmental and regulatory reforms. In comparison, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi are all arguably more regressive than Texas, but they are all relatively small inconsequential states. Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, and even Arizona are all large and influential states; but are less qualified to carry the Far Right’s banner for the ongoing attacks on any sort of regulation of Capitalism. During the Post WW 2 period, Florida and Arizona were never full fledged parts of the Deep South mentality and underwent ongoing population changes, first as outsiders from the North moved there to retire or just to live, and later because of increasing amounts of foreign immigration. Virginia slipped out of the complete thrall of that regressive socioeconomic and political milieu as the suburbs of the Nation’s Capital, along with Richmond and Charlottesville, came to dominate the electorate there; Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona are visibly in some stage of becoming more progressive politically with their changing demographics, several decades of the growth of different urban populations, and political organizing against the right-wing dominance in all three states. It is easy to forget now that California was not the leading progressive state, that it is now at least symbolically, until similar demographic changes overtook it a couple of decades earlier than those that are now occurring in the “South”.
Perhaps by default, the Right wing has placed Texas in the role of the exemplar for supposedly demonstrating how laissez faire Capitalism can produce a prosperous and vibrant socioeconomic and political order. Extolling the virtues of Texas, these propaganda and disinformation efforts always mention the ongoing population growth (these people supposedly drawn there from California and “the North” to enjoy “freedom” from overweening “Commissar” like bureaucrats) as well as the new companies and foreign investment in Texas. This is always stressed and contrasted, in the most negative terms possible, to the situations in California, Illinois, New York, and other places outside of the Deep South. Of course right-wing propagandists never discuss the facts that; the Texas economy was buoyed for decades (going back at least to New Deal spending in the 1930s) by investments by the Federal Government in building the state’s infrastructure; it was bolstered by sustaining the numerous military bases and the location of large amounts of armaments production in Texas; there was also a variety of Federal programs that funded the high-tech industries that have flocked to Texas’ major cities; plus the many subsidies given to the fossil fuel industries based in Texas amount to tens of billions of dollars a year; and so on. (5)
Even before the collapse of the electrical system and the water purification systems there were many disturbing examples of the glaring deficiencies of the brand of unregulated Capitalism that Texas exemplifies including its “right to work” (for less) law. The most notable recent weather related event was Hurricane / Tropical Storm Harvey that hit from August 25th - 31st in 2017. The storm was a Category 4 Hurricane when it made landfall at Rockport, Texas about 160 miles south of Houston. By the time it reached the Houston Metro area it had weakened to a “Tropical Storm”, but it did stall over the Houston area and: “More than 30 inches of rainfall fell on 6.9 million people, while 1.25 million experienced over 45 inches and 11,000 had over 50 inches, based on 7-day rainfall totals ending August 31.” Not just coincidentally the parts of the Houston metropolitan area that are low-lying and therefore are the most prone to flooding were largely developed with various types of “multi-family” rental housing. And much of that area is where the 45+ inches of rain did the most damage. The main flood control structure for the Houston Metro area, the Addicks Reservoir, was built in the 1930s as a New Deal era project, and was designed to protect an urban area of 300,000 - 500,000, not the current 6.5 million people who live there now. (6)
ERCOT, the Eastern and Western Interconnects, and Deregulation
This latest disastrous event occurred during a time when the incompetent and uncoordinated response to the Covid-19 Pandemic had already demonstrated that the U.S. Capitalist Class is losing its grip on power and even on reality. The leading political players, both in Texas and the nation at large, were also still adjusting to the consequences of the January 6th fascist attack on the National Capitol. A major ruling class commentator, Eurasia Group President Ian Arthur Bremmer, recently wrote that: "You can't lump U.S. democracy in with Canada, Germany, and Japan anymore, … We’re now midway between them and Hungary." As discussed above, Texas has become in many ways, the leading “Red State” among the constellation of right-wing administered State Level regimes. For that reason, the shocking failure, and near collapse, of the Texas Electricity Generation System and the Distribution Grid over the past week, has major symbolic and ideological consequences. (7)
One aspect to all this is that the deregulated ERCOT system dealt with the refusal to build any sort of reserve capacity, by the privately owned for profit power companies, by setting up a separate “Spot Market” for electricity. The amount of electrical generation capacity that Texas can mobilize in the hot weather peak energy use events in the summers is 125,117 megawatts, for the peak power demand this February about 69,150 megawatts were available (presumably some 56,000 megawatts were down for maintenance and service upgrades). However the cold weather froze gas well heads, froze piles of coal to the ground, froze uninsulated pipes that generally carry natural gas, even some nuclear power equipment froze. Much of the natural gas remained available was prioritized for direct heating. “In total, about 34,000 megawatts of power generation in Texas went offline during the winter blast, more than 40 percent of peak winter demand. So even with a diverse range of energy sources, Texas was left scrounging for electrons in the bitter cold.” (actually 49.17% of ERCOT’s Winter power generation capacity was taken offline). (8)
In the resultant free wheeling Spot Marketplace the various electric utilities could and did sell power to one another during this time of duress on a sliding scale for price. This system was really envisioned for much less dramatic situations, but it was in full operation this week. The ERCOT power Spot Market moved up to 150 to 200 times the regular price. Utilities with no other alternatives bought significant amounts of power on that exchange. This has already resulted in many retail electricity users being dunned for thousands, even ten or twenty thousand dollars for the power they did get during the emergency period. In one example, a retired Army Veteran living in Dallas was billed $16,752 on his credit card, he emptied his savings account to pay up and keep from being charged outlandish interest charges in addition. Another example is “Akilah Scott-Amos, who is a Texas resident who saw her electricity bill jump over $11,000”, ( $11,048,75 to be precise). Her bill actually jumped by $5,000 for one day’s electricity. Others who have been dunned for extremely high power bills include “Lisa Chumley, a second-grade teacher in Dallas, received a bill of over $11,000 from Griddy for less of a week of electricity.” and “Karen Knox, a special education teacher in Bedford ... She lost power during the crisis but still owes some $7,000 to Griddy …”, and “Aubrey Jakob, a Starbucks barista …” who were charged “...more than $560 (for one day) ... The next day, their power went out. Reheating the apartment and taking a shower left them with a $449 bill.” In another outrage; “Lisa Khoury, a resident of Chambers County in Houston, (sic) (Texas dm), filed a class-action suit Monday against her electricity provider, Griddy Energy. According to the suit, Khoury was charged $9,546 between February 1 and 19, an amount hundreds of times higher than her typical bill range of $200 to $250. Khoury said Griddy pulled $1,200 from her bank account via an auto-pay system before she stopped payment through her bank, but she still owes over $8,000 for power that was intermittent, according to the complaint. Khoury and other class members of the suit are seeking $1 billion in monetary relief. "Griddy charged Khoury in the middle of a disaster. She and her husband mostly were without power in their home from Wednesday, February 17, 2021, to Thursday, February 18, 2021. At the same time, Khoury hosted her parents and in-laws, who are in their 80s, during the storm. Even then, she continued to minimize any power usage because of the high prices”. Large corporate power users were completely shielded from these outlandish prices for electricity. Besides benefitting from a more favorable legal status; no corporation with a competent legal department would have ever signed on to one of the variable rate electric power plans, proffered by the hundreds of companies that sprang up in the wake of the deregulation law. What is particularly shocking about this is that when ENRON did this in California over a decade ago, it was illegal. This current outrageous situation in Texas is perfectly legal. (9)
Most people are vaguely aware that the U.S. electrical system is interconnected and electrical power is frequently transmitted from where it is generated to where it is needed. North America, Canada, the U.S., and the area of NorthWest Mexico that included Tijuana, Baja California del Norte to be exact, have long had an integrated and coordinated electrical generation and distribution system. The rest of Mexico has a completely separate system of electrical generation and distribution. The U.S., Canada, and NW Mexico are divided into three major “grids” the Western Interconnect, the Eastern Interconnect and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). All three have further subdivisions into regional electrical supply and distribution systems. In fact the North American Grid is considered to have two major alternating current (AC) power grids with interconnections (the Eastern Interconnect and Western Interconnect), and three minor interconnections: the Texas Interconnection, the Québec Interconnection, and the Alaska Interconnection (see maps 1 & 2). (10) The maps below will do a lot to clarify this overall situation:
Map 1: The 3 Major Electrical Grid Systems of North America
(Source: ERCOT, NERC Interconnections Map, http://www.ercot.com/news/mediakit/maps)
Map 2: The Nine Reliability Councils of The Lower 48 States, Canada, and Northern Baja California del Norte, Mexico
(Source: Western Interconnection, Wikipedia, at < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Interconnection >)
Map 3A: A Close-up View of ERCOT
(Source: (Source: ERCOT, ERCOT Region Map, http://www.ercot.com/news/mediakit/maps)
Map 3B: Another Close-up View of ERCOT: With Slightly Different
Boundaries
( Source: Texas Coalition for Affordable Power, Aug 30, 2017, Anon, at https://tcaptx.com/industry-news/centerpoint-profits-rates-on-the-rise )
The reason for posting the two slightly different maps of ERCOT is that while Map 3A, that is posted on ERCOT’s website, and is listed as the actual boundary of their “service area”; Map 3B has the boundaries that actually fit in to the “3 - part” Eastern and Western and ERCOT interconnect maps posted everywhere, including on the ERCOT website. One example of that is Map 1 here, that is also posted at ERCOT’s website. I have no idea what the reason is for this discrepancy.
Texas Goes it Alone: Far Right Ideology and ERCOT
Texas business tycoons always wanted to avoid any sort of meaningful regulation by the Federal Government, particularly during the Roosevelt / Truman New Deal years. In fact back nearly 90 years ago: “As electricity infrastructure evolved in the 1930s, the federal government regulated energy across state lines. But Texas had its own grid network, the Texas Interconnected System, and a flourishing oil trade. So the state shrewdly spurned interstate grids.” Then 80 years ago during the buildup for war production: “In 1941, Texas investor-owned utilities did their part by connecting into two networks serving the northern and southern parts of the state. Congress had already given the Federal Power Commission (now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) authority to regulate interstate power sales. Texas didn't have any state-level regulation of power companies, and the utilities liked it that way. They also didn't want federal regulation. So they were pretty careful to avoid selling or buying power across state lines. ...
“In 1970, the Texas utilities formed ERCOT to comply with reliability guidelines established in the wake of the nation's first devastating power failure - the 1965 Northeast Blackout. In 1981, ERCOT took over as the grid operator.” (11)
The ERCOT region of Texas is almost completely isolated from the rest of the U.S. Power Grid in the Eastern and Western Interconnect grid areas. Or as Julie Cohn, the author of the article “Texas seceded from the nation's power grid … “ cited in note 10 pointed out: “... this week, it means that we are unable to import large amounts of power from the gigantic eastern and western interconnections when we need it.” Of course, much of the rest of the country particularly in the “eastern interconnection” and in the far eastern part of the “western interconnection” did not have any spare electricity to send to Texas. Though there would have been some from the mountain SouthWest that did not suffer from the great invasion of arctic air. Typical of the way these giant cold waves occur, the frigid Arctic Air was channeled to the east of the Rockies and the general western mountain ranges, this particular one moved straight south through the Central States, and only delivered a glancing blow to the Eastern States.
The most important factor in the failure of the Texas ERCOT grid and in electricity generation occurred because the various electrical utilities in the state did not invest the necessary resources to “winterize” their facilities. There had been many warnings and much advice that this was necessary but the privately owned for-profit companies did not want to spend the money necessary to do this. The main concern, that occurs nearly every year in Texas, is the necessity of generating enough power to make it through any severe heat waves in the summer. But severe cold air invasions are not unknown. In fact there was a particularly severe one, that occurred during the Super Bowl that was played on February 6th, of 2011, at the Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. That major cold spell caused numerous local power failures in much of Texas. A major report and advisory was written in response, warning of the many vulnerabilities to cold weather, of the Electrical Generation and Distribution System in the state. (12)
The Power Failure in Texas over the last 10 days was certainly the most serious in the history of Texas and one of the most serious in U.S. history. Map 4 below shows the rate of power loss by households by county on January 16, 2021.
Map 4: Proportion of Households Without Power in Texas by County: Jan 16, 2021 at 10:00 AM
(Source: “No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas’ power outages”, , Feb 16, 2021, Erin Douglas & Ross Ramsey, Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/ >)
The Right-Wing Propaganda and Disinformation Offensive
Fully aware of the importance of assigning blame for the nearly complete failure of the electricity system in most of the state, numerous far-right commentators tried to blame, “frozen windmills”, the “Green New Deal” (that has not been enacted in law and is for now just a liberal talking point), and even “Alexandria Ocasio Cortez” (who is a congresswoman from New York City, representing a district divided between The Bronx and Queens, btw).
On the Sean Hannity Show on Fox News, Texas Governor Greg Abbott actually said “... this shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. … our wind and our solar, they got shut down and they were collectively more than 10% 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 for the state of Texas, as well as other states, to make sure that we’ll be able to heat our homes in the wintertime and cool our homes in the summertime. … I think California is in a tougher situation because they’re even more reliant upon the Green New Deal type of energy, such as wind and solar, and they don’t have the capacity that a state like Texas does to be able to tap into fossil fuel, … if the Biden administration is going to try to eradicate fossil fuels in the United States, every state is going to constantly have challenges like what America has seen take place in Texas right now. … it’s just foolish to think that we can disband the use of fossil fuel and have a safe and comfortable nation. … One thing, Sean, that was unprecedented was the ultra low, below 10 degrees temperature.” (13)
Former Texas Governor, and Secretary of Energy during the Trump regime, Rick Perry made even crazier assertions. In a blog posted on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Website Perry wrote that “... those watching on the left may see the situation in Texas as an opportunity to expand their top-down, radical proposals. Two phrases come to mind: don’t mess with Texas, and don’t let a crisis go to waste …
Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business, … Try not to let whatever the crisis of the day is take your eye off of having a resilient grid that keeps America safe personally, economically, and strategically.” (Emphasis Added, seeing as Rick Perry, who no doubt owns plenty of fossil fuel company stock and who also no doubt has backup generators at his personal home, certainly feels that way. As for the 4 ½ million people without power, heat, drinkable water, and many with serious property losses from broken pipes and other issues not to mention the many deaths, I doubt they are as emphatic in their worries about the evil Federal Government) Of course this blathering is all the more absurd when we consider that the big increase in Wind Power in Texas took place while Rick Perry was Governor of the State. In fact: “In a farewell speech to the Texas legislature in January 2015, Perry, said: ‘You can be proud that Texas produces more energy from wind turbines than all but five countries.’ " Unfortunately, along with the fossil fuel installations added to the Texas inventory, the wind turbines were built “on the cheap'' and the private business interests did not bother to add the sorts of winterizing features that keep Wind Turbines, and other types of electricity generation, working just fine in Antarctica, Siberia, Iowa, and Canada during cold weather. Perry also wrote “"The frozen turbines out in West Texas is a freakish event. But that's what the government is supposed to think about—what are the freakish events that can occur that could cost people their lives, and to protect against that, … We need to have a baseload. And the only way you can get a baseload in this country is [with] natural gas, coal, and nuclear." Contradicting the statements by Abbott and Perry, an expert on the situation pointed out that: “ ‘Texas is a gas state,’ said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
“While Webber said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis, the natural gas industry is most notably producing significantly less power than normal.
“ ‘Gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now,’ Webber said.” This was seconded by an official from ERCOT: “Dan Woodfin, a senior director at ERCOT, echoed that sentiment Tuesday.
“ ‘It appears that a lot of the generation that has gone offline today has been primarily due to issues on the natural gas system,’ he said during a Tuesday call with reporters.” (14)
But it gets even crazier and more absurd than Perry and Abbott. One example of that is Dan Crenshaw, who is the House member from the 2nd Congressional District in the Northern and Western suburbs of Houston.He is a former Navy Seal as well as an immigrant from the U.K. He wrote a long series of tweets that included the following statements: “This is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source. When weather conditions get bad as they did this week, intermittent renewable energy like wind isn’t there when you need it. … It’s a once in a century weather event. California has constant energy problems and high prices. ... This raises the obvious question: can we ever rely on renewables to power the grid during extreme weather? No, you need gas or nuclear. … With blackouts across Texas, many are wondering: what happened? Leftists are cheering a ‘red state’ having energy problems. … A mix of over-subsidized wind energy and under-investment in gas power means we didn’t have enough base load energy for a massive spike in demand. Also, Texas infrastructure isn’t designed for once-in-a-century freezes. … For all the sanctimonious leftists who think they ‘owned Texas,’ you know Cali deals with this ALL the time? Even without rare weather events. Bottom line: Texas’s biggest mistake was learning too many renewable energy lessons from California. … Every natural gas plant stayed online. The ‘downed’ plants were due to scheduled maintenance. Gov. Abbott made the right call in diverting all natural gas to home heating fuel and then electricity for homes. Gas and coal brought a stable supply of energy, but still not enough.” Crenshaw’s series of tweets is far too long to include all of them here.
One thing is certain. Crenshaw never addresses the fact that Wind Turbines, Solar Power arrays, Natural Gas Fired, Coal Fired, and Nuclear Power stations all regularly function in other places, during weather far colder than what Texas experienced over the last week - 10 days. One article noted that: “It’s estimated that of the grid’s total winter capacity, about 80% of it, or 67 gigawatts, could be generated by natural gas, coal and some nuclear power. Only 7% of ERCOT’s forecasted winter capacity, or 6 gigawatts, was expected to come from various wind power sources across the state.” Crenshaw also makes an incorrect assertion where he states that “Texas infrastructure isn’t designed for once-in-a-century freezes“. The last major cold wave of a similar magnitude to what hit this last week occurred during early February of 2011, and it caused many localized power failures but those local blackouts did not coalesce into a generalized failure such as happened this winter. In response to those events many experts and reports warned Texas it needed to winterize its energy generation and transmission infrastructure; but nothing at all was done to achieve that over the last 10 years. “In 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission warned ERCOT that power plants must winterize their equipment. Electricity providers, beholden only to the market, largely ignored the advice.” I lived in Texas for over 20 years from 1980 to 2001, and can remember at least 3 or 4 major cold waves of a similar magnitude during that time period. The various infrastructural elements of Texas Society groaned under those cold air invasions, but the power system did not even get near collapse. Up through 1999, the Texas Electrical Generation and Distribution System, while intentionally cut off from most connections with the two major U.S, grid systems was still being run using standard practices; including having a 15% level of reserve generation capacity. The increasing effects of power deregulation had not yet taken hold then, but they certainly have now. Crenshaw also never deigns to discuss the fact that ERCOT is intentionally almost cut off from the rest of the North American Electrical Grid, for the reason of avoiding any Federal Regulation. The parts of Texas that are not in the ERCOT territory did not experience power failures of the magnitude seen in the ERCOT territory. (15)
The Most Extreme Right-Wing Statement of All
However, the various tweets and statements of Abbott, Perry, and even Crenshaw pale in comparison to the statements posted on Facebook by Tim Boyd, who was the Republican Mayor of Colorado City, Texas until he posted some vicious comments and resigned. His comments are on an entirely different level, maybe he just says what people like Abbott, Perry, Crenshaw, and Cruz think but don’t actually say. Here are his comments in full:
“Let me hurt some feelings while I have a minute!!
“No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local governments responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn hand out! If you don’t have electricity you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe. If you have no water you deal with out (sic) and think outside of the box to survive and supply water to your family. If you were sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your (sic) lazy is (sic) direct result of your raising! Only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic). Folks, God Has given us the tools to support ourselves in times like this. This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW work and others will become dependent for handouts. Am I sorry that you have been dealing without electricity and water; yes! But I’ll be damned if I’m going to provide for anyone that is capable of doing it themselves! We have lost sight of those in need and those that take advantage of the system and mesh them into one group!! Bottom line, quit crying and looking for a handout! Get off your ass and take care of your own family!
Bottom line - DON’T BE A PART OF A PROBLEM, BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION!”
(Source: “Colorado City mayor resigns, responds to his controversial Facebook post”, Feb 16, 2021, Jamie Burch, KTXS12ABC, at < https://ktxs.com/news/local/colorado-city-mayor-resigns-after-controversial-facebook-post >, note this statement as posted at the TV station website had already cleaned up some of Boyd’s grammatical and spelling mistakes {and had changed his text to create an entirely new spelling mistake btw} I changed the corrections back to match the text below, obtained from The Owl Report)
This Below is the Original Text posted by TIm Boyd on his Facebook Account, Before his Resignation from the Mayor’s Office was Known
(Source: “[Update}: ‘Republican Mayor Tim Boyd of Colorado City, Texas resigns after his “Only the strong will survive and the weak will perish’ Facebook goes viral.” February 16 at 5:26 PM, The Owl Report, at < https://www.facebook.com/TheOwlReport/posts/4344290902266350 >)
Clearly the Capitalist Credo is rarely expressed quite this nakedly; but here from the Facebook Post of the very recently resigned former Mayor of the West Texas community of Colorado City, we have it in black and white. I would venture a guess that Mr. Boyd has never missed a meal, and no doubt had a generator to keep his wine chilled and his home warm during the power outage.
Boyd posted a second statement, somewhat but not really very contrite. That post included this: “I would never want to hurt the elderly or anyone that is in true need of help to be left to fend for themselves. I was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout.” He also notes that his wife lost her job because of his vicious statement, and claimed that he was receiving many messages criticizing and even threatening him, it is hard to have any sympathy for such a nakedly vicious apologist for Capitalism. (16)
Finally we have the case of Senator Ted Cruz. Of course Cruz’s botched and supremely arrogant attempt to slip away for a few sunny days in at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Cancun in contravention of CDC pandemic guidelines against travel to/from Mexico (That hotel with its excellent security, as extolled by his wife in a tweet to fellow ruling class types inviting them along, and with rooms for just $309 a night, and “good ocean views”) overshadows his comments on the Power Outage, Water Crisis, and shortages of food, that afflicted the state he represents in the Senate. Cruz even had the cheek to demand that Houston Police, on duty at the airport, escort him through the throngs of hoi polloi infesting the airport’s lobby and corridors. Of course, in this era, when everybody has a video camera in their pocket or purse he was observed, and people in the airport made videos of him boarding the flight to the Tropics. The uproar forced him to change his plans and return the next day rather than use his original return ticket for Saturday, Feb 20th. Hardly surprised by events and disasters associated with the collapse of the Power Generation and distribution system: “Mr. Cruz had been acutely aware of the possible crisis in advance. In a radio interview on Monday, he said the state could see up to 100 deaths this week. ’So don't risk it,’ he said. ‘Keep your family safe and just stay home and hug your kids’ ”. In the summer of 2020 he had tweeted that: “California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity. Biden/Harris/AOC want to make CA’s failed energy policy the standard nationwide”. That particular post seems very ironic in light of what happened this last week in Texas. (17)
The Climatology and Global Warming Aspects of the Situation
Finally we need to look at the reason for this outbreak of the Polar Vortex that is not a straightforward situation in the epoch of Global Warming. The role of the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream is important and must be understood to comprehend why during a period of Global Warming we are seeing strong outbreaks of extremely cold air moving down into the Central and Southern Plains of the U.S. The Jet Streams, there is one in the Northern Hemisphere and one in the Southern Hemisphere, are driven by the difference in temperature between the Polar Region and the area immediately south of the Polar regions. With the advent of Global Warming the average temperatures in the Polar Region have risen much more than in the areas closer to the equator. This has had the effect of weakening the Jet Streams, and they are more likely to be “bent” and to “migrate” to positions much farther into the Temperate zones than used to be the case and sometimes to stay there for extended periods of time. In North America this has had the effect of causing more warm and dry weather in the winter in the Western U.S. and more cold and wet weather in the Eastern and Central U.S. This also plays a role in allowing for hot summers with more heat waves for all of North America. Thus the increased wobbliness of the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream has contributed to an increase in both droughts and floods, as well as both heat waves and cold snaps. This graphic below demonstrates what happens when a weakened jet stream (aka Polar Vortex) allows extremely cold air to spill from the Arctic into the Temperate latitudes of North America and Eurasia. (18)
Figure 1). Comparison of Location of Cold Arctic Air. Strong Polar Vortex (Jet Stream) in December of 2013 on the left vs Weakened Polar Vortex in January of 2014 on the right.
(Source: “Ice Loss and the Polar Vortex: How a Warming Arctic Fuels Cold Snaps”, , Sep 28, 2017, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, at < https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28092017/polar-vortex-cold-snap-arctic-ice-loss-global-warming-climate-change/ >)
What Does it all Mean??
Global Capitalism, and the Capitalist Regime in the U.S. in particular, has been rocked by a variety of crises in recent years and even weeks. The pace and severity of these crises, from Financial Collapses, to constant uprisings by working people around the globe, to the Pandemic, to the Events of January 6th at the U.S. Capitol, to a variety of environmental to this collapse of the Power, Water, and Food systems in Texas, are occurring more frequently than in the past. This occasions both dangers and opportunities for the left. For a few weeks the, usually supremely confident and arrogant, Capitalist rulers of Texas will be more vulnerable than usual to political pressure from the population of the state. What we see so far are lawsuits, one of them asking for $1 billion from ERCOT and the constituent power generation and supply companies that work within the ERCOT system. That is the typical response one would expect, working within the constraints of American Capitalism and its judicial and political system. But the working people of Texas should mobilize to demand far more from the ruling class, than that a few of them are able to win monetary damages.
The U.S. ruling class is in a greatly weakened position, as compared to that in previous years. That is the real reason that we see them resorting to supporting paramilitaries, extreme-right demagogues like Trump, unpredictable events like the January 6th assault on the National Capitol, and crazed and not necessarily controllable movements like the QAnon operation. The Organized Left, in the U.S., is small and powerless, yet there are probably more leftists in the American population than ever before. As China and the rest of East Asia continue to grow in economic, industrial, technological, scientific, political, diplomatic, and military power the U.S. will have to adjust to a second tier status in the world. The U.S. ruling class has absolutely no idea about how to do this. Rather, they think they have a God-Given right to dominate the world, and are willing to sacrifice us, our children, and our grand children to their project. If we do not organize and oppose them, in solidarity with the working people of the world at large, they will drag us into the abyss with them. As Joe Hill said “Don’t mourn, Organize!”.
References:
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< https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/texas-power-grid-failures/ >: Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011, Jul 7, 2011, Staffs of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation: “Texas power grid got crushed because its operators did not see need to prepare for cold weather”, Feb 16, 2021, Will Englund, Washington Post.
13). “Greg Abbott Hannity Interview Transcript on Texas Blackouts, Power Grid Issues”, Feb 16, 2021, Rev, at < https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/greg-abbott-hannity-interview-transcript-on-texas-blackouts-power-grid-issues >: “Officials Falsely Hold Windmills at Fault”, Feb 18, 2021, Dionne Searcy, The New York Times: “Texas governor tries to blame Democrats after GOP mistakes cause of fatal power outages”, Feb 16, 2021, Bob Brigham, Raw Story, at < https://www.rawstory.com/texas-power-outage-blackout-abbott/ >: “Blame the wind? In Texas, fossil fuels have actually played a larger role in leaving millions without power’, Feb 16, 2021, Charles Davis, Insider, at < https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-power-generation-has-been-from-fossil-fuels-2021-2 >.
14). “Rick Perry Suggests Texans Voluntarily Go Without Heat to Fend Off Scourge of Socialism”, Feb 18, 2021, Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, at < https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/rick-perry-texas-power-outage >: “No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas’ power outages”, Feb 16, 2021, updated Feb 17, Erin Douglas & Ross Ramsey, Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/ >: “Rick Perry says Texans will endure blackouts 'to keep the government out of their business' ”, Feb 18, 2021, Victoria Bekiempis, The Guardian, at < https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/18/rick-perry-texans-endure-blackouts-keep-government-out >: “Former Texas governor Rick Perry claims Texans would rather endure blackouts than a federally regulated power grid”, Feb 17, 2021, Azmi Haroun, Insider, at < https://www.businessinsider.com/rick-perry-says-texans-would-rather-blackouts-than-regulate-power-grid-2021-2 >.“Officials Falsely Hold Windmills at Fault”, Feb 18, 2021, Dionne Searcy, The New York Times: “Blame the wind? In Texas, fossil fuels have actually played a larger role in leaving millions without power’, Feb 16, 2021, Charles Davis, Insider, at < https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-power-generation-has-been-from-fossil-fuels-2021-2 >: “Rick Perry Blames Frozen Turbines for Texas Outages—He Made the State a Wind Powerhouse”, Feb 18, 2021, Brendan Cole, Newsweek, at < https://www.newsweek.com/texas-power-cuts-rick-perry-federal-government-renewables-1570117 >.
15). “Rick Perry Suggests Texans Voluntarily Go Without Heat to Fend Off Scourge of Socialism”, Feb 18, 2021, Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, at < https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/rick-perry-texas-power-outage >, the simplest way to get to look at a major thread of Crenshaw’s tweets is to click on the live link at the word “wrote” in the 4th paragraph of this Vanity Fair article it is in this phrase “In another long thread, he wrote, “This raises the obvious question”: Crenshaw Twitter Thread, at < https://twitter.com/DanCrenshawTX/status/1361810447431827459 >: “No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas’ power outages”, Feb 16, 2021, Erin Douglas & Jack Ramsey, Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-frozen/ >: “Officials Falsely Hold Windmills at Fault”, Feb 18, 2021, Dionne Searcy, The New York Times: “Blame the wind? In Texas, fossil fuels have actually played a larger role in leaving millions without power’, Feb 16, 2021, Charles Davis, Insider, at < https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-a-majority-of-lost-power-generation-has-been-from-fossil-fuels-2021-2 >: “The Texan dream of going it alone was never real: Losing power in Texas — and losing faith in the state’s reverence for rugged individualism”, Feb 23, 2021, Aaron Hedge, Vox, at < https://www.vox.com/first-person/22297174/texas-winter-storm-uri-power-outages >: Report on Outages and Curtailments During the Southwest Cold Weather Event of February 1-5, 2011, Jul 7, 2011, Staffs of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
16). “The Owl Report”, Feb 16, 2021, Full Text of Boyd’s Tweet, at
< https://www.facebook.com/TheOwlReport/posts/4344290902266350 >: “Colorado City mayor resigns, responds to his controversial Facebook post”, Feb 16, 2021, Jamie Burch, KTXS12ABC, the full text of both his original Facebook Post, and his somewhat contrite followup post are both available there, at < https://ktxs.com/news/local/colorado-city-mayor-resigns-after-controversial-facebook-post >: “Texas mayor resigns, says local government ‘owes you nothing’ as residents go days without heat or power”, Feb 17, 2021, updated Feb 18, Nicole Lyn Pesce, Market Watch, at < https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ex-texas-mayor-says-local-government-owes-you-nothing-as-residents-go-days-without-heat-or-power-11613579671 >:
17). “Bolting to Cancun, Cruz Finds More Heat Than He Expected”, Feb 19, 2021, Shane Goldmacher & Nicholas Fandos, New York Times: “Rick Perry Suggests Texans Voluntarily Go Without Heat to Fend Off Scourge of Socialism”, Feb 18, 2021, Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, at < https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/rick-perry-texas-power-outage >: “Ted Cruz says leaving Texas during winter disaster was "obviously a mistake" as he returns from Cancún”, Feb 18, 2021, Abby Livingston, Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/ted-cruz-cancun-power-outage/ >.
18). “Polar Vortex: How the Jet Stream and Climate Change Bring on Cold Snaps”, Feb 2, 2018, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, at < https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02022018/cold-weather-polar-vortex-jet-stream-explained-global-warming-arctic-ice-climate-change/ >: “Warming Is Messing with the Jet Stream. That Means More Extreme Weather”, Oct 31, 2018, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, at < https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102018/jet-stream-climate-change-study-extreme-weather-arctic-amplification-temperature/ >: “Ice Loss and the Polar Vortex: How a Warming Arctic Fuels Cold Snaps”, Sep 28, 2017, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, at < https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28092017/polar-vortex-cold-snap-arctic-ice-loss-global-warming-climate-change/ >: “Wobbly Jet Stream Is Sending the Melting Arctic into ‘Uncharted Territory’ ”, Jun 9, 2016, Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News, at < https://insideclimatenews.org/news/09062016/greenland-arctic-record-melt-jet-stream-wobbly-global-warming-climate-change/ >: “More-Persistent Weak Stratospheric Polar Vortex States Linked to Cold Extremes”, Jan 1, 2018, Marlene Kretschmer et. al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, V 99(1), at < https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/99/1/bams-d-16-0259.1.xml
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