Osler's Razor

Allow me to be the first person to fulfill your prophecy of Texans refusing to self-flagellate in spasms of shame and horror and repentance and renunciation regarding our independent and Republican ways.

Preface. While I do not know all the facts (have never heard of ERCOT until this week), I am astonished, flabbergasted, and frustrated that almost every smart person I know read a headline and immediately defaulted to the explanation that fit best with their political worldview. Sad state of affairs. Every piece of news confirms every preconceived notion. One side sees Red Texas getting their just desserts. Cluck, cluck, cluck. The other side wonders why oil and gas strong Texas would ever prostrate ourselves before the god of green energy and put ourselves at the mercy of the elements just to signal a little virtue to people who hate us. And, of course, the debate over whether this proves or debunks global warming is also a real gem.

What seems logical. We are not great at preparing for events that seem unlikely in our experience but will nevertheless inevitably come our way. The last winter like this was 1983-84. Not that long past (although it is a generation ago). So, our bureaucracy and infrastructure for delivering power is not really set up for high efficiency in this particular once-in-a-generation problem. By the way, our system is not really capitalist (free market) and it is not totally publicly owned (due to the unique nature of delivering utilities it exists in a hybrid state). But, for the most part, consciously or unconsciously, we are dealing with tradeoffs. Do we want to add-in costs over time that will protect us from once-in-a-generation events? Or do we want to take the risk and deal with crisis every few decades when it comes? This week I am cursing the bastards who did not pay the extra freight to insulate us from this disaster that all of us in the back of our minds knew was coming. On the other hand, as a student of human history and human nature, I think I get it. Engineered by millennia of evolutionary biology, we tend to be a crisis management kind of species. We excel at problem solving much more than problem avoidance. The wise ants among us tend to be the exception.

Undoubtedly, there will be investigations--and we will find many Republicans and businessmen who acted unwisely out of foolishness and cupidity. But I am not sure these revelations will actually prove much in the way of determining which party is evil and which one is on the side of the angels. My guess is, after much public raging, investigation, and political grandstanding, we will fix the problem that just happened and continue to leave ourselves open the future problem headed our way (that some analyst somewhere can easily predict right now but will shock us when it arrives). And we are also leaving ourselves open to a series of potential problems that might come our way that will actually never hit. Such is life (or at least this is my fatalistic worldview).

In the meantime, after a week of sub-freezing temps, I am ready for a sunny, unseasonably warm Central Texas day in February (which is forecasted for next week).

God Bless Texas. Please forgive us for our trespasses even as we forgive others for their trespasses against us. We are all in this thing together. Either we will hold together or surely we will come apart.

Due to circumstances not unrelated to our present difficulty, I can only submit this as an Anonymous poster. But this is the Waco Farmer. Grace and peace.
 

Well, I'm wondering how much the devil pays for a Governor's and a reporter's soul. There is so much misinformation in this interview. Let's go through a few points:

-- as the Governor stated, renewables make up 10% to 13% of Texas' energy sources. So why is this little 10% bringing TX to it's knees? It's not. As you and Waco Farmer stated, it's a lack of planning and preparation, not the energy sources that caused this problem. As my Colonel dad used to always tell me growing up, "prior planning prevents piss-poor performance". Words to live by.

-- "TX is blessed with multiple sources of energy such as natural gas and oil and nukes." While TX has approximately 3 active uranium mines, it's nowhere near a world leader (or even U.S. leader). The world leaders are Australia (also the "Saudi Arabia of coal"), Kazakhstan, Canada, and Russia. TX could make LOTS of money tapping into wind in the region (as many farmers have already discovered).

-- "Fossil fuel is necessary for the state of TX as well as other states." This is a factual statement, but he should have added, "fossil fuels are necessary until we can transition to infrastructure that supports renewables"

-- "I've interviewed guys working on the Keystone XL pipeline.....and they [the movie stars] say let's close down the Dakota pipeline and now they're going to close down ANWR." ANWR isn't open. It never has been. The argument is whether to open it to oil exploration (and the answer should be "hell no")

-- "these are high-paying career jobs" (referring to pipeline work). According to Forbes, during the two year build of the Keystone XL, between 6,500 and 2,500 people would be employed. After the pipeline is built, we would see roughly 35 permanent jobs in pipeline maintenance and inspection. "Career jobs?" Unless you're an NFL player, the average job tenure should be over 2 years.

-- "rolling blackouts" in CA -- they're not due to renewable energy. They're due to infrastructure issues (not the source of the energy) and some wildfire issues.

-- "we're all going to pay more at the pump, we're all going to pay more to heat our homes, jobs are being lost, and these countries in the middle east, some of which hate our guts, are going to get rich again, Putin is going to benefit financially, the mullahs in Iran will benefit financially, and China's going to benefit financially". First off, the U.S. is a net oil exporter. The Keystone pipeline does not provide oil to the U.S. It transports oil to the Gulf coast for shipping elsewhere. Jobs in the renewable energy sector have actually been increasing in recent years, as opposed to jobs in the non-renewable sector. In fact, the job prospect for renewables is so strong, the state of VA is starting a new program to train folks in renewable energy technology, including training on how to work on and service offshore wind turbines (coming soon to VA!) Are there issues with the transition and should we be sensitive to the needs of folks who are losing jobs in the non-renewable sector? Definitely, but change is a comin', so we need to figure out how to make the transition. Perhaps a "Marshall Plan" as Mayor Bill Peduto suggests. Here's an interesting piece from the Mayor of Pittsburgh that can be a model to other regions: https://youtu.be/4O3UrUaPlnU

continued....
 

onward!

-- "so it makes no sense whatsoever to me to be in the Paris accords where they look at countries like China and India as developing nations and we're paying 100 times more than they are, or a significant amount more" So, the Paris accord has each country set its own strategy for meeting the accord goals. Countries do not pay each other. Each country looks at its emissions and its economy and makes a commitment which they can achieve. The U.S. has one of the highest per capita uses of fossil fuels in the world -- that's the number to which we have to pay attention, along with total emissions.

The rest of the interview is equally as weak. As a state that is in the bull's eye for much of climate change's rage (hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes, and wildfires), it would benefit the people of TX to have leaders who are willing to make the difficult choices and lead the state to a prosperous future.
 

Interesting perspectives, Waco Farmer, in particular this: " . . . [F]or the most part, consciously or unconsciously, we are dealing with tradeoffs. Do we want to add-in costs over time that will protect us from once-in-a-generation events? Or do we want to take the risk and deal with crisis every few decades when it comes?"

I think, in the case of energy production and infrastructure needs in the US going forward, an individual state such as Texas or indeed the country as a whole needs to be led first by science. We know that climate is changing. Scientists are already making the case that these more frequent or more widespread extreme cold events are evidence of changing climate as much as increasingly frequent extreme heat. Past shortcomings aside, power production and distribution will need to change everywhere to keep up.

The larger tradeoff, though, is the risk of not preparing for once-in-a-generation events. Think about the current pandemic. Maybe it only happens in this magnitude once a century, but we've lost nearly 500,00 people in a year and lost untold human potential in terms of the costs to education, employment, mental health, health care, and others. Does that mean state and federal government shouldn't spend money on vaccine stockpiles and medical equipment, or should neglect frequent planning for an epidemic or a pandemic?

And I doubt that many people in Texas would take the long view of the loss of life and health at happening to them at the moment. Then there's the hypocrisy of some Texas politicians' decrying government regulation of the energy grid at the same time they accept FEMA's emergency generators, fuel, and water to keep the hospitals running. When does it ever happen that a state in the middle of a climate-caused humanitarian crisis says, "No need, FEMA, we're good?"

I realize this is the perpetual tug among the two political parties: What's the role of government in Americans' lives? The linguist George Lakoff calls the conservatives' view of government the "strict father" model, while the progressives see government as the "nurturant parent." There may be downsides at the extreme of the progressives' view, granted; but Texas seems to have practiced the former to an extreme when perhaps they could use some of the latter.
 

Ah, Waco Farmer -- I see that I am yet another non-Texan piling on! I have no idea how to solve the difficult tradeoffs of living in an interconnected country.
 

Waco Farmer-- I've been thinking about that tradeoff between costs and preparedness for rare events. It's a legitimate dilemma. I remember confronting it as I sat in Guido Calabresi's torts class-- his tiny book, "The Costs of Accidents," had a real impact on me.

Working on a piece for the Waco Trib, I looked up electrical costs by state. Texas isn't in the top ten, and barely in the top 20, for low electrical rates. The rates there are about the same as what we pay in heavily-regulated Minnesota, in fact. I'm not sure what to make of that-- except that Texans appear to be getting neither readiness nor especially cheap energy. Deregulation sometimes benefits consumers (ie, airlines), but certainly not in this case.