The Factors That Resulted in Such an Appalling Response 

I wanted to tie together all the factors that resulted in this complete shit-show of a situation. What happened in Texas was a literal perfect storm. While the factors might not all be the same in the future, much of it will absolutely contribute to the increasing severity of both natural disasters and the death and destruction they’ll cause. 

ERCOT and Deregulation

First off, we have ERCOT – the Electrical Reliability Council of Texas, which, as we saw, was not at all reliable when it came to a storm like this, despite assuring everyone they were. 

The reason for the lack of reliability includes the next set of factors making things worse – deregulation and turning a profit at the expense of Texans. The storm was “perfect” because Texas is the only continental state not to be federally regulated on the national electrical grid. With a desire to stay unregulated and not under government control, ERCOT and the state of Texas remain their own entity when it comes to power generation. 

Because of this deregulation, no one forced them to do proper upkeep and upgrades to their energy sources and services. This, despite the recommendation of winterizing their equipment after the 2011 Texas snowstorm. Not only did their renewable energy fail, but their fossil fuel production did too. 

All this, to make shareholders more money at the ultimate expense of Texans. And we’ll likely see Texans also footing the bill of covering the costs of any damage by the storm if they use taxpayer funds. 

The Big 3

This leads to arguably the three biggest factors: climate change denial, capitalism, and classism. 

Climate Change Denial

Because of the conservative mindset that climate change is a hoax, action to prevent the damage caused by increasingly frequent and destructive storms, Republican-held states like Texas (and even blue states) aren’t taking steps to mitigate any part this. It’s honestly surprising that they do have some percentage of renewable energy in their state. But maintaining a priority on fossil fuels only exacerbates climate change and the fallout we see from it. If representatives of this state took climate change even a little seriously, we might have at least seen weatherized equipment withstanding the storm and power not going out.  

Capitalism

Capitalism, a beast of its own, contributes to the horrors of this situation by seeing it manifest in the form of companies like ERCOT making money by not improving their systems, fossil fuel companies destroying the environment for profit, and representatives taking money from these kinds of lobbyists. Capitalists and corporations will never spend money they don’t have to, nor will they ever regulate themselves. 

Classism

Lastly, going hand-in-hand with capitalism, classism factors into the horrors we saw unfold in Texas too. It manifested in how they kept the power on for the richer city-centers, but not the outlying neighborhoods. Or how wealthy mega churches kept their doors closed while people died in the cold on the street. Letting profit be a priority at the expense of human life, has always been a facet of capitalism. As long as we let this cruelty exist in our society, all for money, more people will suffer, die, or be displaced. And those people disproportionately impact poor people, disabled people, Black, and Indigenous people, and other communities of color. 

Altogether, these factors created a perfect storm to go with an unprecedented storm all its own. 

Moving Forward

I am not a resident of Texas. My opinions only hold so much water. From an acknowledged outsider perspective, one who’s responding as a human trying to uphold ideals like ethics and justice, these are the moves that I think would appropriately respond to what happened while taking action for future situations like this. 

Resignations

Ideally, resignation from people involved in all this, like the ERCOT board members who voted for profits over people, Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and any other elected officials who tried to push blame on their constituents or otherwise abandoned them in a crisis. 

Since I started writing this piece, at least five of the ERCOT board members have, in fact, resigned, all of them being the ones who didn’t even live in Texas. So that’s a step in the right direction. Though I don’t see Cruz or Abbott resigning, it will be interesting to see how their next reelections pan out.

Accountability

Moving on, I don’t want to only see lawsuits against these electric companies that started charging outrageous prices or cut off power unnecessarily, resulting in death. I want to see accountability; the cancelation of ALL the electricity bills for Texas residents during the storm. These bills of thousands of dollars, almost up to $20K, and the companies saying they’ll work out a payment plan instead of canceling those outrageous bills entirely, needs addressing before it starts impacting people. And I mean the companies take the hit for it, not the taxpayers.

Addressing Homelessness

Next, there needs to be better plans in place to shelter homeless people and others in situations like this. Whether it’s a winter storm or other natural disaster, making it mandatory to provide shelter would save lives in the future. Of course, eradicating homelessness by making housing a human right would be best, but that’s a conversation for another day. 

Utility Ownership

Lastly, I’m of the opinion that public ownership of utilities would also prevent this from happening again. Private utility companies have proven repeatedly, whether it was PG&E in California or ERCOT in Texas; they cannot be trusted with the public’s best interest; they always choose profit over social responsibility.

So while the first step should be to bring regulation into Texas’ energy market, getting the citizens of the state in control of the energy itself would be better all around. That won’t happen for a long time, if ever, but we can only hope for the best. Perhaps enough people in Texas will decide that these things should happen and get it there themselves at some point.