Texan Quixotic Tilt!

19 February 2021

Did any one thing that having a common border with Mexico or being the self styled ‘Lone Star’ state would leave Texas in a sense of splendid isolation, bring it grief on a ‘rainy’ day? Actually what should have been a normal winter of snows, a spell of white weather, has turned into one series of ‘super inches’ snow storm https://www.cbsnews.com/news/second-winter-storm-coming-millions-suffering/, not just in Texas but in general over the US.

Of course, it appears now that a basic toolkit is needed to first categorise this event of weather as part of a larger cataclysm of climate change that has been going on for some time now. It seems rather, that a Don Quixote should be a motif to describe the official Republican and conservative media response to Texas now, a crises which was built domino by domino before the entire stack collapsed in this spell, a crises of power outage that has extended for four days on the trot now!

One would really not think that scientism and loony bin Q Anon conspiracists could actually take to this kind of fringe spawn, but they did, and they were led not just by Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson, but I am quite sure that even the recently departed Rush Limbaugh too would have called out on his radio show the farce of ‘green energy’, the tragedy of the windmills of Texas and vented their collective spleen upon the hapless AOC!

Texas had less than 13 % of all its power from renewable sources including windmills. It has actually power from renewable sources, meaning that those windmills the Fox TV and the conservative media are railing against were actually working, not all of them but most of them, offering to Texas grid whatever juice they could muster in the ambient weather conditions. In Germany too people were suffering lower power generation, which was being blamed on solar panels being clouded out by snow overhang, with a bogey of concerns raised about reliability of renewable energy in extreme weather. Oblivious of course to that fact that the problem lay elsewhere- insulation. In states like Iowa where the national grid had done proofing and insulation for extreme cold weather spells, the turbines worked, the coal and gas fired up, the grids did not fail, and I am sure that next time such a spell hits Germany, the Germans will have adapted their grids too.

One of the myths that fossil fuel addicts ply is that renewables are actually auxiliary, they can never take over the actual load, that they are unreliable, and are likely to fail the grid in moments of crises like extreme bad weather spells. This ‘understating’ or ‘misrepresentation’ allows the fossil fuel addicts to keep guzzling away their carbons under what Pakistani judiciary once legitimised their military coups- Doctrine of Necessity!

The science has advanced so much that now the Dutch are placing a windmill power-plant offshore, rigging it up for access to multiple national grids, as if penitent for their leading harvest of oil from offshore rigs. The science has invested in storage and in software to manage the uneven generation of power from windmills and solar panels, even as it is working on hydrogen, which could be cleanest fuel of the future, where non renewables are unavailable. Energy research firm Wood Mackenzie have calculated that at an estimate of 4.5 trillion $ the US Power grid (including Texas currently not a part) can switch entirely to renewables in the next decade. EU has already crossed an important threshold when this year https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248992/renewable-energy-beats-fossil-fuels-europe-electricity she consumed more of her energy requirements from renewables in comparison to fossil fuels. And even as biomethane, wood chip fired plants are compared to and included in this mixture in a broad category, the understanding of renewables now is not just fossil origins, but also in its overall ecological footprint, which is why ‘hydropower’ is not a ‘clean energy’ anymore, even though it harnesses water of the rivers and gravity to generate energy!

So the RW in USA is making a case against the Green New Deal, one that is advocated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who gets their goat, so much that Trevor Noah actually ran a segment that parodied the neoconservatives collective hatred of her, which fuelled a new power producer for Texas that could supply energy needs for all of USA! I believe that she gets a target painted on her for more reasons than her personality that is relentless and forceful, while remaining focussed on her political messaging. I believe strongly that it is because she is a woman, that she is articulate and ‘head strong’, that AOC is such a target! When the average conservative thinks that women should not go to college, stay at home, work blue collar jobs at the most that is suited for them, AOC gets no free pass despite being a waitress, because she broke through their gender traps and is now in Congress! The irony of how AOC is now fund raising for Texas relief is never going to hit them, because they live in Q Anon Land.

Even Texas governor Greg Abbott https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/17/abbott-republicans-green-energy/ joined the charade that blamed ‘frozen windmills’. I have a theory why Texans and Republicans believe that to be true. Simply put, they are in that pre Industrial Age where the windmill was more a water mill, using water run to power the pestle. So naturally in freezing weather the river would have frozen leading to frozen windmills. Got it? Now what can you do for such a bunch of bozos? How can you alleviate their level of understanding, introduce them to the 21st Century for technologies they don’t want to accept?

The problem with conspiracy web is you realise they are all interconnected.You believe one, you believe all, or at least pretend to believe all. For Ted Cruz the ranking senator from Texas, this has led to grief https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/ted-cruz-originally-planned-to-spend-multiple-nights-in-cancun-but-flew-back-early-to-texas-amid-a-torrent-of-criticism/articleshow/81100947.cms for he thought he could sit out the storm. Again see whom does he blame for his absence? His daughters! Yes, Ted blames his daughters! After all, it is from them he gets his travel passes, right? Is he not under their conservatorship, revealed now, after all these years. Can we start a movement for freeing Ted like we have one for Britney Spears?

Then there was this Mayor from Colorado City Tim Boyd https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tim-boyd-texas-mayor-colorado-city-resigns-power-outages/ who actually wrote this on his Facebook wall- “only the strong will survive and the weak will…” He went to further add-“ No one owes you your family anything; nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or Swim it’s your choice!” Even our Atmanirbhar Bharat will not have an elected official pouting such insensitive nonsense, so naturally he resigned over this post. Yet will he be prosecuted for dereliction of duty? Boyd did not clarify if any government had any responsibility in his opinion, while seeking a pass for his own local one. Knowing that he is Republican, may be he meant to tell his residents to seek Biden’s help all the way from Washington DC, the only problem is to avoid regulatory supervision, Texas had yanked itself off the national grid, which is why this outage is lasting so long in the first place!

We have the biggest hurdle to our Climate Challenge not from lack of scientific understanding, alternatives, choices, or even willingness of ordinary citizens. We have this from fossil fuel addicts, including the Koch brothers, whose web of Dark Money, Dark Theories and Darkness of Pretend Ignorance allows them to continue with their charade. We see Republicans as sold on this lobby, even before they became a rump party of President Trump. As Trevor remarked in his show- Americans want to see Texas go blue, not like this this from a freezing hell, but by voting Democrat. So is the only solution to save the planet a political choice that throws out right wing conservatives every where?