Lynn Allen was one of the lucky ones.
Despite much of the county surrounding his Ringgold, Texas, home losing power during the ice and snowstorm Monday, his house was fully powered because he was hooked up to a different power supply than most of his town was.
“Not that long ago, a pump station was put in about a mile and a half to 2 miles as the crow flies from my home, and they put me on their circuit,” said Allen, a rancher. “And, guess what? I don’t lose power anymore, but the whole town lost power.”
On Tuesday morning, Montague County, where Ringgold is located, reported nearly 24% of its customers were still without power, joining 4 million other Texans who became victims of an energy supply system that collapsed under the pressure of the frigid winter storm.
The images of frozen wind turbines and solar panels brought to life how one of the most independent and powerful energy states in the country could fall to its knees when snow, ice, and frigid temperatures battered its power grid.
It was imagery that tells a cautionary tale of what the future in this country could look like if the Biden administration continues its dismantling of fossil fuel and related infrastructure industries. In short, what happened in Texas could happen anywhere, whether under the strain of a winter storm in Texas and Oklahoma or a heat wave in California.
The power outages in Texas are a stark illustration of the consequences of our energy industries having to slash carbon emissions to appease climate activists, consequences that don’t just affect how you heat your home but also how you turn the lights on in your children’s school, or the building you work in, or the church in which you worship.
“What’s happening to our electrical system across the country is they’re jamming all this stuff here,” said Dan Kish, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, a group that analyzes energy market regulation. “Solar and wind by their very nature can’t work all the time and are very subject to weather conditions like this. And you’re beginning to see it break down.”
“What’s really scary,” he added, “is [that] Texas is only 23% dependent upon wind for its electricity right now.”
Kish said, in Texas, the natural gas supply was affected as well because of the frigid temperatures and the inability to transport it due to hazardous road conditions.
The entire situation highlights how Biden’s climate-justice policies will test the resolve of the public if situations like what happened in Texas become more widespread.
The rancher Allen, who was recently laid off from his job as a welder on the Keystone XL pipeline, said we are a country that is used to instant everything.
“Press a button and turn on a light, jump in your car and drive to wherever you want to go, press the screen on your phone, and you can buy whatever you want,” he said. “I’m not quite sure we are prepared to have those conveniences slowed down or ground to a halt for climate justice.”
On Jan. 20, the same day Allen lost his job to Biden’s executive order killing Keystone, Biden signed a different order that created an office of health and climate equity at the Health and Human Services Department and a separate environmental justice office at the Justice Department. All of those environmental-justice executive orders were designed to affect each agency across the federal government, said Kish.
“They don’t just cost some guys job you’ll never meet,” said Allen of himself, “but when they start to impact being able to turn your heat on during a storm or your lights or your life, then it’s not just some guy you don’t know, then it’s you.”
“This is a forewarning of what can come, and the most illuminating question is, can this happen anywhere else?” said Kish. “And the answer is yes. We haven’t even seen the beginning of this yet.”
