Writer / Tiger Knife & Shadowless Knife
Temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees; more than 1.6 million homes and businesses without power and water; at least 23 people died; Biden directly declared a state of emergency in Texas.
Texas is becoming a true "Lone Star State."
Previously, the name was derived from the fact that it was an independent republic, and it also commemorated its independence from Mexico.
Today, this lone star also reflects another 49 stars in the United States.
In the latest 24 hours, what's happening in Texas? How does it uncover the harsh truth of American capitalism once again?
1
Since the weekend, extreme cold waves have swept through multiple parts of the southern United States, with power outages in several cities, but Texas has experienced a more lethal and widespread humanitarian disaster than other regions.
Because the power system collapsed, many Texans had to find ways to keep warm: families hiding in their closets and hugging each other; getting a little heat by burning children's toy blocks and wooden railings in front of their houses; long lines to gas stations to buy gasoline, cutting wood in the wild, using gas, barbecue grills, and even hiding in cars.
But all of this implies the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning: Texas reported 50 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning on Tuesday, including two deaths, according to reports. There are also families who catch fires while using fireplaces for warmth, and no family of four is spared.
Similarly, because the power system collapsed, many home water pipes burst, and the equipment of the water company could not be activated, the official called on people to remember to boil tap water before drinking tap water - but the question is, where does the electricity for boiling water come from?
In the context of water shortage and power outages, hospital beds are full and oxygen supply is insufficient, and it is difficult for newborn premature babies and seriously ill patients to get enough oxygen to survive. Ambulances in the city of San Antonio could not meet the surge in demand, and the county government in Galveston called for the use of refrigerated trucks to load the bodies.
In addition, in the new crown virus in Texas, this large-scale power outage will also cause new concerns, a US reporter revealed: a new batch of vaccines in Texas was supposed to arrive as soon as the 18th, but because of the power outage in the storage place, more than 8,000 doses of vaccines were almost useless, of which 5,000 doses were sent out urgently, but the rest were all scrapped.
With power outages, water cuts, food shortages, hospital emergencies, and in less than a week, Texans laughed at themselves for "going from place to place like refugees in the Third World, just for a little gasoline or water or food."
The Governor of Texas said the state's fuels, including coal and oil-fired power generation, as well as green energy sources such as wind and solar, have been depleted. According to the forecast of the meteorological department, the temperature may not rise until after Saturday.
It stands to reason that the state is not in such a situation: it is the largest oil and gas producer in the United States, with 41% of the country's oil production and 28% of the wind energy supply, and it is truly the largest state in energy.
So the question is, why is Texas, supposedly the least short of electricity in the United States, so vulnerable to this blizzard?
Many people say that it is because of this "once in a century" cold wave. Texas is located between 25-36 degrees north latitude, the temperature has always been higher than the national average, and this cold wave hit, the lowest temperature in many parts of Texas is lower than the average temperature of the same period of the year more than ten degrees, or even more than twenty degrees, and the duration is as long as several days, the local completely unprepared.
So is this an unavoidable natural disaster?
No. Because Texas' power supply is self-contained and independent of the U.S. federal grid system, and the electricity market is the responsibility of the Texas Power Reliability Commission (ERCOT), the measures taken by the federal grid system to deal with the cold winter have not been adopted by the Texas grid system. And during this cold wave, Texas could not accept reinforcements and help from the power transported from other regions by the federal power grid.
In fact, the lack of readiness to cope with the low winter temperatures has been a problem for The Texas power system. Texas also suffered a winter that crippled its power grid 10 years ago, when a cold snap caused more than 3.2 million homes in Texas to lose power during the Super Bowl. The U.S. federal government wrote a 350-page report recommending its rectification, but it was not implemented.
This time, when asked why ERCOT didn't enforce more freeze protection measures to prevent blackouts, Dan Woodfin, senior director of ERCOT system operations, said: "ErCOT's role is not necessarily to enforce these things."
So what is the role of ERCOT? Collect money?
After this cold wave crushed the state's power supply, ERCOT directly issued a statement: price increase! On Monday, data showed wholesale electricity prices on the Texas grid had soared more than 10,000 percent, and real-time wholesale market prices had climbed to $11,000 a megawatt, compared to less than $100 on a typical level.
Now, in the face of this unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, has Texas moved from the top down from the government to the big corporations?
Yes, but they are busy throwing pots at each other.
Republicans began to take the opportunity to criticize the green energy promoted by Biden. Some Republican politicians as well as Fox News said that the extreme weather caused the wind turbines to freeze, and the turbine blades in Texas never used antifreeze and other heating components. Wind power accounted for 23 percent of Texas' total electricity supply last year.
This claim was quickly refuted by the Democratic media and the White House: No. Although some wind turbines do freeze, most of the lost electricity comes from coal-fired, natural gas and nuclear power plants. In winter, wind energy accounts for only 10 percent of Texas' electricity generation.
As we all know, the governor of Texas is a Republican, and the Democrats are also looking for a target of artillery attack: the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party criticized Albert for putting votes in mind, not working for the people of Texas.
And the quarrel between state and municipal governments has only just begun: The mayor of Houston sees it as the jurisdiction of the Texas state government, not the responsibility of city and county governments.
So the spearhead of public opinion was aimed at Albert, the governor of Texas, and in the face of the cauldron that was thrown at him, Albert turned his eyes to ERCOT: he denounced ERCOT as completely unreliable, and demanded a thorough investigation.
The balls were kicked around, and millions of starving and frozen Texans had to start saving themselves:
It is very touching, but in this extreme situation, Americans can only rely on themselves and cannot count on the government, is this touching or sad?
2
Here are a few images that have been widely circulated on Twitter in Austin, the capital of Texas, and the downtown is bright and dazzling, and the lights are not extinguished. The blackout, as if it didn't exist at all.
On the other side, a gray darkness.
They are used to question the local power sector – why is there an explicit order to save and cut off electricity, but perhaps an empty office building is still lit up?
What the Wall Street Journal sees is that many affluent neighborhoods in Austin, downtown, and the city's western part have never had power outages, while eastern neighborhoods, home to more low-income residents and communities of color, have been without power for days.
A local Austin newspaper said the photos showed a power divide between downtown Austin and East Austin, a historically black and Hispanic community.
The local energy department had different explanations, saying there was a lot of "vital infrastructure" in the city center, such as hospitals, government buildings and so on.
But this is obviously difficult to convince those who are suffering in the dark and the cold. On the list of people who paid for their lives to fend off this snowstorm, there is not a single rich man.
The chasm between rich and poor, washed away by a blizzard, took shape.
As a whole, Texas has enough pride in its achievements.
It is a large energy state in the United States, and its economic strength is also very strong. It can be said that Texas is the top student in the history of contemporary economic development in the United States, and its total GDP has grown from the sixth in the United States in the 1970s to the second largest in the United States, second only to California, the most populous state.
Texas has a population of 29 million, a total GDP of 1.8 trillion yuan, and a per capita GDP of $62,000.
If it were to stand on its own, Texas would have the tenth largest GDP in the world, even higher than Canada.
And GDP per capita, it can also rank at the top of the world.
Not only that, texas is also a place where big cities are concentrated, with three of the top ten most densely populated cities in the United States, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.
Its capital, Austin, followed tenth in eleventh place.
But these are just appearances.
In 2019, an article published on the Austin American Statesman website said the so-called "Texas Miracle" was built on wage slavery and a sharp rise in income inequality. It's not so much a miracle as it is a disaster.
The article cites a figure that said income inequality surged 16.3 percent between 2008 and 2017. Houston's highest earners earn 12.6 times as much as the lowest earners.
According to the study, the bottom 25 percent of households had to manage to make ends meet on incomes that were 73 percent less than the median overall household income.
Data say Houston is the city with the highest level of income inequality in Texas, ranking 11th in the nation.
Low-income earners, whether they face ubiquitous social risks or natural disasters such as snowstorms, are undoubtedly powerless.
And the local government has also shown that it can't help.
The situation is getting worse, with an article in the Washington Post saying that from 2017 to 2018, there were 9 states in the United States that saw a surge in inequality, and Texas was also prominently listed.
Studies have also shown that Dallas, a representative city of Texas, is a more accurate interpretation of the saying that "the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer" more accurately than the whole state as a whole.
As a result, some of the more magical scenes also appeared in Texas, adjacent to Houston's gleaming high-rise buildings and galleries, with unpaved streets and shacks full of shotguns.
In the face of such a huge gap between rich and poor, Texas's wealth is created by a few people, and it will always be the majority of people who have no wealth who bear the consequences of the blizzard.
The local government, however, always sided with a few.
This is not only a problem for Texas itself, but for the whole of the United States, and these two tweets from American netizens have revealed the essence.
"I remember when I left Texas for Florida in 2018, a lot of people asked me if that was wise. We all need to understand that as long as you are poor, there is no place that is immune to the effects of climate change.
The rich will have heating, water, air conditioning and food, their homes will be repaired if damaged, replaced if destroyed, they will be protected by the police, while others around them will be frozen, burned, drowned or starved, and they will not rebuild homes for us. ”
Indeed, what exposes the harsh truth of the capitalist world is an epidemic in the United States, a wildfire in California, and a snowstorm in Texas.
3
In this disaster, there is warmth and there is no lack of strangeness. The most bizarre thing in our opinion is probably the remarks of Tim Boyd, the mayor of Colorado, Texas.
What he said, many people should know.
He wrote in a web post: "The government's responsibility is not to help you in such difficult times!" Survival or death is your own choice! Governments and power providers and other service providers don't owe you anything. ”
He also said that "only the fittest can survive, and the weak will only be eliminated", and he even said that when difficulties are encountered, they seek help from the government "is a sad product of the socialist government".
The remarks provoked outrage, and Boyd resigned.
If he dares to speak like this in China, he may face more than just "resignation" or even "social death".
Some people say that American officials with higher emotional intelligence will translate this psychological monologue into: "The government is carrying out all-round rescue, please be patient." "Then the rhetoric is not true.
On the other hand, he dared to say this, and it seems that he really thinks so, and many American politicians actually think the same way.
And Boyd's unobstructed statement has the internal logic of Texas itself.
In 2017, columnist Wright, also an authentic Texan, wrote a "America's Future in Texas" at The New Yorker, in which he described Texans this way:
Texans see themselves as a collection of the best qualities in America: friendliness, self-confidence, hard work, patriotism, and normal spirits. Outsiders generally believe that Texans blindly worship individualism and see the government as a harmful substance that damages the body of entrepreneurs.
The book Right Nation writes that freedom-loving Texans have tamed the beast of government by various measures.
Measures include a 140-day session of the state legislature that takes only two years, legislators whose nominal salary is $7,200 a year, and whose governor does not even have the authority to appoint his own cabinet.
Keeping the government as small as possible is the Attitude of The Texans.
Boyd was in it and naturally understood.
In addition, Texas has another characteristic, that is, it is generous to those who win gambling, but it is very harsh on those who have bad luck.
In a word, the poor love the rich.
Superimposed on the background of low taxes in Texas, weak unions, stingy public sectors, and insignificant welfare, it becomes that there is no credit for the government if it succeeds, but it is not blamed on the government if it fails.
This is the case on a daily basis, and under the storm, there is no reason to change.
The attitude of non-interference, of course, has also caused the gap between rich and poor in Texas to grow wildly, and many people will only become more and more difficult to deal with natural disasters and various risks, and eventually fend for themselves.
It can also be said that Boyd's words reflect the reality of Texas.
And what kind of place is Texas? The author of RightIst State gives a succinct answer — it's a "condensed version of America," at least the essence of a conservative America.
The pictures are from the Internet