When windmills froze and Texas faced rolling blackouts, Governor Gregg Abbott blamed the Green New Deal. Meteorologist John Morales calls that gaslighting on behalf of special interests since most of the state’s energy comes from fossil fuels.
Professor Kelly Sanders of USC says Texas is actually a leader in renewable energy, but is lax in regulation. She was in Texas 10 years ago, when a cold snap predicted this year’s disaster. “We've been saying it's just a matter of time until something like this happens.”
Sanders says nationalizing the electrical grid is a really interesting idea in the age of extreme weather events.
In the second part of this episode, Andrew Bacevich of the Quincy Institute has a warning about President Biden’s repeated claim that “America is back.” If that means returning to the nation’s post-Cold War preeminence, Bacevich says, “One of the reasons Donald Trump won [the White House] in 2016 was because increasing numbers of our fellow citizens recognized … that recipe was failing.”