Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Last February, Texas experienced a rare event that involved snow, sleet and temperatures that went as low as ten degrees. Now for those of you living up North you are probably rolling your eyes and shrugging. As a native Texan, I can tell you that seeing snow is a rare event. Usually when we do see snow, there is usually not enough to make a snow-cone, much less a snowman. While we do experience cold-snaps, it is very rare to see temperatures as low as ten degrees.

While I have always taken pride in my home state, I often realize that it is not without its flaws. That being said, I can honestly say that I have never felt truly let-down by my state, until now. Nearly a week before the snowstorm hit, we were warned about the possibility of losing power in our homes. Originally, I thought they were referring to down power-lines, but I would come to realize that they referring to the high demand for energy that they couldn’t meet. I remember scratching my head and thinking “We live in the biggest oil and gas state in the union. How can we possibly run out of energy?” I think Tucker Carlson said it best, that running out of energy in Texas is like starving in a grocery store. You have to actually try really hard at doing something that stupid. Right you are Tucker. They basically talked about rolling blackouts to save energy, which sounded good in theory. Unfortunately for my family and I, we live in a neighborhood that had its power shut off for thirty-six hours. Basically, we sat in the dark all that time freezing our tails off and listening to whatever news we could get from a battery-operated radio, while praying that our pipes didn’t freeze up. What was really frustrating was hearing from friends that lived in neighborhoods that didn’t even lose a single second of power. While shivering in the dark, we found ourselves repeating “Rolling blackouts, my ass” over and over.

What was the reason behind the failure of our power-grid? One of the reasons had to do with the freezing of half the windmills that were responsible for over twenty-percent of the power generated in Texas. Of course, the people who are infatuated with the idea of green energy were quick to point out that the windmills only provide a small percentage of power to the state and that it was failure of the equipment used to produce natural gas that was at fault. If I had to say who was at fault it was certainly the ineptness of Ercot, the corporation overseen by the government to run the power grid of my home state. Don’t get me wrong, I have always thought that the so-called green energy ploy was a complete crock sold by environmentalists, who contrary to popular belief know very little about science. Whether it’s solar or wind, you actually need quite a bit of it to produce the kind of energy that you need to replace natural gas or coal. Not to mention that it is far from continuous, which means that this form of energy will be rendered useless on days where this is no sun or wind. I also think that it is ridiculous that any oil and gas state, much less the largest one in the union should have any kind of dependence on green energy, no matter how small. Yet, most of the fault lies with the company that runs our grid. They had over a week to prepare for the coming storm, but either through greed, stupidity, sheer incompetence or a combination of all three of these things, decided to sit on their hands.

What I really found amusing is the cluelessness of our local newscasters, who at one point tried to say that this disaster happened because we didn’t have any federal oversight. When I heard that I had laughing fits for almost two minutes. First of all, Ercot is far from being a private entity, but is actually a utility company heavily regulated by the Texas legislator, the Public Utility Commission and the governor. So basically, federal oversight would amount to nothing but adding more worthless bureaucrats who sit around and twiddle their thumbs all day. Then there is our favorite congresswoman AOC, who said that this whole disaster happened because Texas didn’t use enough green energy. That is like saying that the Hindenburg disaster never would have happened if they used more hydrogen. I even laughed harder when Senator Chuck Schumer said that this whole ordeal should teach us a thing or two about climate change. Yeah, it sure did Chuckie boy. It made us thankful that the green initiatives that you love so much only account for a small percentage of our energy, otherwise my state would have been without power much longer than it was.

I also think it is worth mentioning that the media seemed more enraged at Ted Cruz taking a vacation to Cancun, than the callousness of the people who run our grid. It’s funny how the people who really seemed outraged by this are leftists and their media cronies who never seemed to show the same indignation towards Obama spending more time at the golf course than behind the desk at the Oval Office or the outrageously extravagant vacations his family took to Hawaii on the tax payers’ dime. What exactly did they think Cruz was going to do? Perform some magic dance that would have driven the temperatures up? I guess it would be similar to that magic dance that Trump was supposed to have performed to make COVID go away.

There have been calls to investigate Ercot, though I am not sure anything is going to come of it. There have been several members of their management that have resigned and some that were fired; however, I am not convinced that the people who run that company or the people responsible for regulating it will learn anything from this disaster. Though, if Texas ever hopes to have a truly independent power grid, we are definitely we going to find better people to run it.