In February of this year, a winter storm swept through Texas, bringing snow and freezing temperatures that sent the entire state’s power grid into failure. Millions of residents across the state were subjected to power outages and empty grocery shelves reminiscent of early-coronavirus pandemic panic. While official numbers will not be finalized for months, dozens of recorded deaths have already been associated with the storm and its related consequences. As of March 1 — two weeks after electricity returned — almost 400,000 residents were still lacking guaranteed clean water following a disruption to water systems and supplies. NPR reported in late March that 111 people had died as a result of the storm, according to the Texas State Department of Health Services.
As Texans boiled snow for clean water and slept in rooms where icicles formed inside their homes, their politicians abandoned them. Instead of taking swift action to address the crisis, they redirected blame towards progressive policies, renewable energy, and anything else onto which they could grasp to diminish the several systemic shortcomings that initially led to the disaster.
This winter disaster highlighted a couple of major tensions within the relationship of media and its influence on our current political landscape. While it is essential to hold politicians accountable for their actions, mainstream media often focuses on the reputations of these individuals and their continuously controversial beliefs instead of the issue at hand and potential (bipartisan) solutions. This often contributes further to heightened polarization between parties without providing equal or increased coverage of the root causes themselves — in this case, clean energy and the climate crisis.
Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, declared that the storm “just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure we will be able to heat our homes in the winter times and cool our homes in the summer times.” In reality, Texas suffered because its power plants and grid are largely driven by gas and fossil fuels, and they froze after being unable to withstand extreme temperatures and conditions. Abbott, Rep. Crenshaw, and conservative commentators including Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson were among those defending the continued use of fossil fuels — they attributed widespread power failures to wind turbines and solar energy instead. Abbott claimed that the storm’s consequences highlighted “how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” given that it champions using renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
In addition to Abbott criticizing a movement addressing climate change and social justice, Senator Ted Cruz notoriously fled to Cancún with his wife and two daughters “to be a good dad,” in his own words. While Cruz was in Cancún for less than twenty-four hours and later admitted to his trip being a mistake, his decision reflects arrogance, misjudgment, and a deplorable misalignment of priorities.
That said, during the most severe week of the storm’s aftermath, when residents were freezing, water and food supplies were disrupted, and communities — including children — suffered fatalities from the severe conditions, why did Cruz’s excursion to Cancún receive the most media coverage and bipartisan attention? Why did photos of his airport apparel and his family’s text messages receive as much attention and analysis as they did when, after all, his actions should no longer be news to his own constituents or to anyone in Washington? As the New York Times reports, “Mr. Cruz has long rankled members of both parties as a self-promoter since his arrival on Capitol Hill in 2013.” He has established his reputation and political agenda as one that only concerns and benefits himself. The senator’s trip to Cancún is a reflection and culmination of the political failure that elevated the crisis in Texas, but not one that should have the power to direct attention and urgency away from the root causes of the events and systemic effects that rippled across the state.
This is not to say that Cruz, other representatives, and politicians as a collective should not be held accountable by their colleagues and constituents for their harmful action and inaction. Recently, Cruz experienced a slight dip in his net approval rating, which has most recently been reported as negative 5 percentage points. Whether his supporters consider his Cancún excursion when he is next up for re-election is yet to be determined, but his actions should not be dismissed.
What the severity of the crisis in Texas does indicate for certain, however, is the need for climate action and a Congressional commitment to do so. To say that what happened in Texas — including a reliance on fossil-fuel driven power — further makes the case for a movement like the Green New Deal is an understatement, but the effects of February’s winter storm were not the first compelling pieces of evidence to prove that. Vox highlights that “From the hurricanes that have hit the Gulf Coast to the wildfires that have spread across the Western US,” extreme weather is becoming more frequent, more disastrous, and more revealing.
Infrastructural change is necessary to increase resilience across water and electrical systems in states such as Texas, but just as important is addressing these system-wide failures across zip codes. In Texas, “many marginalized communities were the first to be hit with power outages,” the New York Times reports. Communities of color face power outages, flooding, burst pipes, and unsafe water supplies to a more severe extent during crises like this one. COVID-19 has already exacerbated issues such as food insecurity that only worsened during the blackouts across the state, further affecting low-income and BIPOC communities.
President Biden’s infrastructure bill, The American Jobs Plan, proposes massive increases in spending to create more jobs, support the transportation sector, and combat climate change, among other issues. The Plan boasts lofty goals to decrease carbon emissions, expand jobs in clean energy, increase electric vehicle production, support climate change research, and re-standardize the country’s electricity. It would “require a certain percentage of electricity to come from clean sources,” as described by Time. While a plan of this magnitude and depth is expected to face opposition in Congress, the Biden-Harris administration is signaling the importance of the climate crisis and acknowledging it as being embedded in the country’s infrastructural and social systems. If the crisis in Texas has demonstrated anything, it is that legislative action on climate change has become a critical necessity. It is now up to members of Congress to reject complacency, reach across party lines, and fully acknowledge the urgency of climate reform for the American people, particularly those most marginalized.
Image by Steve Long is licensed under the Unsplash License.
