Low temperatures of minus 20 degrees; more than 1.6 million homes and businesses have lost power and water; at least 23 deaths; Biden directly declared a state of emergency in Texas.
Texas is becoming a real “lone star state”.
Previously, the name came from its former independent republic and also commemorated its independence from Mexico.
Today, this solitary star also maps 49 other stars in the United States.
What’s happening in Texas in the latest 24 hours? How does it once again uncover the cruel truth of American capitalism?
Beginning last weekend, extreme cold weather swept across many parts of the southern United States, and several cities suffered power outages, but Texas experienced more deadly and broader humanitarian disasters than other regions.
Because of the collapse of the power system, many Texasans have to do everything they can to keep warm: the family hid in the closet and hugged tightly; got a little heat by burning the children’s toy building blocks and the wooden railings at the door of the house; waiting in long lines to buy gasoline at the gas station, cutting wood in the wild, using gas, barbecue ovens, and even hiding in the car.
But all of these implys the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning: Texas reported 50 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning on Tuesday, including two deaths. There were also families who caught fire while using fireplaces to keep warm, and none of the family survived.
Similarly, because the power system collapsed, many household water pipes burst, and the equipment of water companies could not be used. Officials called on people to remember to boil tap water before drinking it – but the question is, where does the electricity for boiling water come from?
Against the backdrop of water shortage and power outages, hospital beds are full, oxygen supply is insufficient, and it is difficult for newborn premature babies and seriously ill patients to get enough oxygen to survive.
San Antonio’s ambulances could not meet the surge in demand, and Galveston’s county government called for the use of frozen trucks to load corpses.
In addition, in Texas, where the coronavirus is still on, the large-scale power outage will also cause new concerns.
Some American reporters revealed that a new batch of vaccines in Texas would have arrived as soon as the 18th, but more than 8,000 doses of vaccines were almost unavailable due to power outages in storage places, of which 5,000 were sent out urgently, but all of them were all of them Scrap.
With power, water and food shortages, hospitals in short supply, in less than a week, Texas people laughed at themselves for “walking around like refugees from the Third World just for a little gasoline or water or food”.
The governor of Texas said that the statewide fuel, including coal and fuel power generation, as well as green energy such as wind and solar energy, has been exhausted.
According to the forecast of the meteorological department, the temperature may not rise until after Saturday.
The state of Texas is not supposed to fall into such a situation: it is the largest oil and gas producer in the United States, with 41% of oil production and 28% of wind energy supply in the United States, making it the largest energy state in the veritable way.
So the question is, Texas should be the least power-scarce place in the United States.
Why is it so vulnerable to this blizzard?
Many people say it’s because of this “once in a hundred years” cold wave. Texas is located between 25-36 degrees north latitude, and the temperature has always been higher than the national average.
When the cold wave hits, the lowest temperature in many places in Texas is more than ten degrees or even more than 20 degrees below the average temperature in the same period of the year, and it lasts for several days, and the local area is completely unprepared.
So is this an inevitable natural disaster?
No. Because Texas’s electricity supply is self-contained and independent of the federal grid system, and the power market is under the responsibility of the Texas Electricity Reliability Board (ERCOT), the measures taken by the federal power grid system to cope with the cold winter have not been adopted by the Texas grid system. And in this cold wave, Texas is also unable to accept reinforcements and help from the federal grid from other regions.
In fact, the lack of preparedness for winter low temperatures has always been a problem for Texas’s power system. Ten years ago, Texas also suffered a cold winter that knocked down its power grid, when a cold current caused more than 3.2 million households in Texas to cut off their power during the Super Bowl. The U.S. federal government has written a 350-page report and recommended its rectification, but it has not been implemented.
This time when asked why ERCOT did not enforce more antifreeze measures to prevent power outages, 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? Do you charge?
After the cold wave knocked down the state’s power supply, ERCOT directly issued a statement: Price increase! The Texas grid’s wholesale electricity price soared by more than 10,000% on Monday, and the real-time wholesale market price has climbed to $11,000 per megawatt, compared with less than $100.
Now in the face of this unprecedented humanitarian disaster, has Texas started to act from the government to the big company from top to the bottom?
Yes, it’s just busy throwing each other’s pots.
The Republican Party began to take the opportunity to criticize it all because of the green energy promoted by Biden. Some Republican politicians and Fox News said that the extreme weather caused wind turbines to freeze, and Texas’ turbine blades never used antifreeze and other heating components. Wind power accounted for 23% of Texas’s total electricity supply last year.
This statement was quickly refuted by the Democratic media and the White House: No. Although some wind turbines do freeze, most of the lost power comes from coal-fired, natural gas and nuclear power plants. In winter, wind energy accounts for only 10% of Texas’s electricity generation.
As we all know, the governor of Texas is a Republican, and now the Democrats have also found the target of artillery fire: the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party criticized Abbott for pretending only to vote rather than working for the people of Texas.
And the quarrel between state and municipal governments has just begun: the mayor of Houston believes that this is the jurisdiction of the state government of Texas, not the responsibility of the city and county government.
So the target of public opinion was on Texas Governor Abbott. In the face of the big pot thrown in succession, Abbott turned his eyes and looked at ERCOT: he scolded ERCOT for being completely unreliable and asked for a thorough investigation.
The ball was kicked around, and millions of hungry and frozen Texasans could only start saving themselves:
It’s very touching, but in such extreme situations, Americans can only rely on themselves and can’t count on the government. Is it touching or sad?
Here are a few pictures of Austin, the capital of Texas, which is widely circulated on Twitter. The downtown is bright and dazzling, and the lights are not out. The power outage does not seem to exist at all.
On the other side, it is gray.
They are used to question the local power department – why is it clear that there is an order to save and cut off electricity, but the empty office building may still have lights on?
What the Wall Street Journal has seen is that many of the wealthy communities in Austin, the downtown area and the western part of the city have never lost power, while the eastern communities where more low-income residents and communities of color have been out of power for days.
A local newspaper in Austin said that the photo shows the power gap between downtown Austin and East Austin, which is a historical black and Hispanic community.
The local energy department has different explanations.
They say that there is a lot of “important infrastructure” in the city center, such as hospitals, government buildings, etc.
But it is obviously difficult to convince those who are suffering in the dark and cold.
On the list of people who paid for their lives to withstand the blizzard, there is no rich man.
The gap between rich and poor, washed away by a snowstorm, shows its true shape.
In terms of the whole, Texas has enough proud achievements.
It is a large energy state in the United States and has a strong economic strength. It can be said that Texas is an honor student in the history of contemporary economic development in the United States.
Its total GDP has grown from the sixth in the United States in the 1970s to the second largest state in the United States, after California, the largest populous state.
Texas has a population of 29 million, a GDP of 1.8 trillion, and a per capita GDP of $62,000.
If it is self-contained, Texas’s GDP can rank tenth in the world, higher than Canada.
GDP per capita, which can rank ninth in the world, second only to Singapore.
More than that, Texas is also a place where big cities are concentrated.
Texas accounts for three of the top ten most densely populated cities in the United States, namely Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.
Its capital, Austin, is ranked 11th, next to tenth place.
But these are just superficial.
In 2019, an article published on the website “Austin American Statesman” said that the so-called “Texas miracle” was based on wage slavery and sharply increased income inequality.
This is not so much a miracle as a disaster.
The article quoted a data that Houston’s income inequality soared by 16.3% between 2008 and 2017. Houston’s top earners earn 12.6 times the income of the lowest income.
According to the study, the bottom 25% of households must try to survive by 73% less than the median overall household income.
According to some data, Houston is the city with the highest income inequality in Texas, ranking 11th in the United States.
Low-income people, whether facing ubiquitous social risks or natural disasters such as snowstorms, are undoubtedly powerless.
And the local government has also shown no help.
The situation is getting worse. According to an article in the Washington Post, from 2017 to 2018, nine states in the United States experienced a surge in inequality, and Texas was prominent.
Other studies have shown that Dallas, a representative city in Texas, interprets the saying “the poor are getting poorer and the richer and richer” more accurately than the whole state.
Therefore, some magical scenes also appeared in Texas, adjacent to Houston’s shining tall buildings and galleries, streets without paving things 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 the majority who bear the consequences of the blizzard are always the majority who have little wealth.
The local government, every time, is on the side of a few people.
This is not only Texas’s own problem, but also the whole United States.
These two tweets of American netizens reveal the essence.
“I remember when I left Texas for Florida in 2018, a lot of people asked me if it was wise.
We all need to understand that as long as you are poor, there is no place to be immune to the effects of climate change.
The rich will have heating, water, air conditioning and food, and their homes will be repaired if damaged, if destroyed, they will be replaced, they will be protected by the police, while the rest around them will be frozen, burned, drowned or starved, and they will not rebuild our homes for us.”
Indeed, what exposed the cruel truth of the capitalist world was an epidemic in the United States, a wildfire in California, and a blizzard in Texas.
In this disaster, there is warmth and strange flowers.
In our opinion, the most bizarre thing should be the remarks of Tim Boyd, mayor of Colorado, Texas.
Many people should know what he said.
He wrote in an online post: “The responsibility of the government is not to help you in these difficult times! Survival or death is your own choice! Government and power providers and other service providers don’t owe you anything.”
He also said that “only the fittest can survive, and the weak can only be eliminated”, and he even said that it is “a sad product of socialist government” to ask the government for assistance in case of difficulties.
This remark aroused public anger, 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 providing all-round rescue, please wait patiently.” Then the mouth is not real.
On the other hand, he dares to say this, and it seems that he really thinks so, and many American politicians actually think so.
And Boyd’s unobstructed statement is behind Texas’s own internal logic.
In 2017, columnist Wright, also an authentic Texas native, wrote an article “America’s Future in Texas” in which he described Texas people as follows:
Texas people regard themselves as a collection of the best qualities of the United States: friendliness, self-confidence, diligence, patriotism and normal spirits.
Outsiders generally believe that Texans blindly worship individualism and regard government as a harmful substance to the body of entrepreneurs.
The book “Rightist Country” writes that freedom-loving Texans have taken various measures to tame the behemoth of government.
Measures include that the state legislature only has a 140-day session for two years, the nominal salary of legislators is $7,200 a year, and the governor does not even have the power to appoint his own cabinet.
Keeping the government small as small as possible is the attitude of the Texas people.
Boyd naturally understands when he is in it.
In addition, Texas is generous to the winner of the bet, but very strict to the unlucky.
In a word, I hate the poor and love the rich.
In addition, the background of Texas’s low tax revenue, weak unions, stinginess in the public sector and negligible welfare, it is enough. If it succeeds, there is no government’s credit, but failure is not blamed on the government.
Daily life is like this, and there is no reason to change under the storm.
The attitude of non-interference, of course, also causes the gap between rich and poor in Texas to grow wantonly. Many people will only become more and more difficult to cope with natural disasters and risks, and eventually die by 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 Right-wing Country gives a concise answer – it is an “enriched version of the United States”, at least the essence of conservative America.
Power outages, water outages, heat… Blizzards have affected millions of U.S. residents
According to CNN, in the past few days, winter storms have hit many states in the United States, killing at least 33 people, and affecting millions of homes and businesses from continuous power outages, water and fuel supplies.
In addition, extreme weather has caused clinics to close, highways to freeze, etc., and the pace of coronavirus vaccination and distribution has slowed down.
According to CNN, in the past few days, winter storms have hit many states in the United States, killing at least 33 people, and affecting millions of homes and businesses from continuous power outages, water and fuel supplies.
In addition, extreme weather has caused clinics to close, highways to freeze, etc., and the pace of coronavirus vaccination and distribution has slowed down.
Water and electricity supply in many states in the United States is blocked.
It seems to rain in many Texas residents’ homes.
As of the 17th local time, there were more than 3.1 million households and businesses in all states across the United States, including 2.6 million in Texas.
According to the Texas Power Department, the problem of insufficient power supply in Texas has covered a quarter of the state, and Texas decided to take turns to relieve the pressure of power supply.
The department said that the power outage in Texas is expected to continue for several days.
The supply of tap water and natural gas in the affected areas due to severe cold weather and power shortages.
Extremely low temperatures caused water pipes to break in some areas and the supply of tap water for residents to be interrupted.
Many residents have leaked water seriously in their homes, and it seems to rain in the house.
Because of the low temperature, the leaked water even formed an ice hanging indoors.
At the same time, a large-scale power outage led to insufficient natural gas supply and interruption of heating supply.
Many people in the disaster area had to choose to burn firewood for heating, resulting in frequent accidents.
According to the report, at least 14 people, including seven children, were poisoned with carbon monoxide in Harris County, Texas alone.
Many stores in the United States are closed.
Some supermarket shelves in Texas are empty.
Winter storms not only caused water and electricity cuts in Texas, but also affected the local supply of living materials.
In the southern part of Austin, Texas, the only supermarket that is still open and has electricity.
Most of the goods have been sold out, and some shelves have been empty, so citizens have to queue up to buy the remaining goods.
According to U.S. media reports, a large number of department stores, stores and supermarkets in the United States were closed due to the storm, and Wal-Mart alone closed 500 stores in the affected areas for a time.
A mayor of Texas asked the people to figure it out for themselves.
He said, “The government doesn’t owe you!”
Some local media in Texas revealed that Texas had suffered a cold winter that knocked down the power grid 10 years ago, but the government did not make rectifications afterwards.
The public expressed dissatisfaction with the continuous power outages.
On the 16th local time, Tim Boyd, mayor of Colorado, Texas, posted on social media, “We don’t owe you and your family anything.
It is not the responsibility of the local government to help you in these difficult times!” “Survival or death is your own choice, and governments and power suppliers and other service providers do not owe you anything!”
Boyd also said that ordinary people without electricity and water should find a way to survive by themselves, instead of “lazily waiting for others to save” and “only the fittest can survive, and the weak will only be eliminated”.
U.S. media reported that Boyd subsequently deleted the relevant remarks on social media, but the content had already been spread on social media.
He then defended that his words were “taken out of context”.
It is reported that Boyd has resigned so far.
Why does the United States have frequent power outages?
Following the Great Blackout in Manhattan, New York in July 2019 and the Great Blackout in California in August 2020, Texas, USA, is now experiencing another massive blackout.
Why does the United States have frequent power outages? Industry insiders analyzed that although the direct cause is extreme weather, the old power facilities in the United States and the insufficient operation mechanism of the overall power system are also to blame.
The local power grid facilities are old.
According to the statistics of the U.S. Department of Energy, 70% of transmission lines and transformers in the United States have a service life of more than 25 years, and 60% of circuit breakers have a service life of more than 30 years.
Old power grid facilities face huge challenges to ensure the reliability of power supply.
Insufficient flexible adjustment capacity of power system
Judging from the change trend of the power structure of the United States in recent years, the power generation capacity of coal power has shown a clear downward trend, and new energy generation such as natural gas, wind power and solar energy has gradually become the main force of American power sources.
Over the past decade, Texas’s wind power generation has gradually become the second largest power source in the state, but the extreme cold weather has caused about half of Texas’s wind turbine capacity to be “frozen”, and wind power supply is obviously problematic.
At the same time, it is not the first time that the shortage of electricity caused by insufficient power reserves and lack of flexible power supply has appeared in the United States.
The root cause of California’s power outage last year is that California’s plan to achieve 100% renewable energy supply is too radical, leaving California independent system operators with sufficient flexible installed capacity to cope with low-probability events. The power outage in Texas has once again triggered controversy about the rapid abandonment of traditional energy facilities and the radical transformation to green energy.
The structure of the power industry is complex.
The structure of the electricity industry in the United States is very complex, especially the property right structure can be said to be “fragmented”.
There are more than 3,000 power enterprises in the United States, including various forms, among which private enterprises are involved in all aspects of distribution and distribution, federal and state enterprises are generally engaged in power generation and transmission business, and municipal public and agricultural power cooperatives are generally distribution and retail business.
This mode of relatively dispersed subjects in the power grid system makes scheduling between power companies very difficult. In the event of an emergency, their ability to support each other is limited.
Moreover, privatized power companies often do not plan for a long time when considering investment and maintenance of power grid facilities, and economic return is their first consideration.
