Memes
You can read it on any Facebook meme – or you can see it on right wing media. Gas prices are up, power has failed in Texas. And it’s all Joe Biden’s fault. The “terror” of the “Green New Deal” is already being blamed. We won’t be able to afford to drive our cars, and people are freezing in their houses in the Arctic vortex winter. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez must be laughing hysterically. After all, doesn’t she control what the Biden Administration does?
I call BS. Let’s talk about what’s really happening.
“Gas Buddy” is a great website. It can show you where the cheapest gas prices are in your area. And it also tracks historic gas prices nationally, and locally. So you can make “apples to apples” comparisons of what’s really going on. Today, if you drive down to Kroger’s, regular gas costs $2.45/gallon (without the loyalty discounts). That’s up $.46 since election day. One argument goes that just the “thought” of a Biden Administration has driven the price up.
But let’s look at the history. Now, February 2021, the price is $2.45. A year ago, before anyone knew that Joe Biden was going to be President, the price was– $2.44. Two years ago, in February 2019, the price was – $2.38. Three years ago it was a little better – $2.25.
What’s the point? That gas prices in February have trended higher for the past few years. There’s lots of reasons for that: gas production switches over to “summer” blend gas, more oil is refined as fuel oil for heating rather than gasoline, the Saudi’s have raised prices. None of that has anything to do with the “Green New Deal”, Ocasio-Cortez, or Joe Biden.
Frozen Wind-Turbines
So for those right-wing doomsayers who cry that Biden will make gas prices $4.00 a gallon: that might happen someday, but it ain’t happening yet. We all know the story of the “Boy who cried wolf”, and they’re doing a lot of crying now. The Biden Administration will try to make the United States more energy efficient, and climate friendly. But it hasn’t happened yet.
But what about Texas the home to gas, oil, “Texas Tea”, and wildcat drilling? The arctic vortex has drifted all the way down to Dallas, with several inches of snow and ice, sub-twenty-degree temperatures, and three million people without power. And, according to the Facebook memes and the Governor, it’s all because Texans have switched to “wind power” and the wind turbines have frozen.
No one has ever claimed that Texas was in the fore-front of the environmental movement. But the “Great Plains” do lend themselves to frequent winds, and the wind power industry is taking advantage. A full SEVEN percent of Texas power is provided by wind turbines. So how did those FROZEN wind turbines shut down the Texas power grid?
Ninety-Three Percent
They didn’t. Texas has a separate energy grid, with the vast majority of power generation based on natural gas, oil, coal and nuclear. But the problem is this: the power generators in Texas “bet” that the once a decade cold snap wouldn’t be too bad. So they didn’t protect the energy generating sources, particularly natural gas. When this cold snap hit, the natural gas pumps literally froze up, and couldn’t pump the natural gas out of the ground to be burned for electricity. Even some of the nuclear plants have shut down, their cooling pumps frozen by the sub-freezing temperatures. And yes, the wind-turbines are frozen too.
But those same turbines aren’t frozen here in Ohio where the current temperature is three degrees, Fahrenheit. They have been winterized, as well as the natural gas electric plants and even the two nuclear plants.
What You Pay For
Think of Texas like that “special” car you only drive in the summer. No reason for snow tires, and no reason to check the anti-freeze. No need to protect it, because you don’t ever bring it out, stored in the warm garage for the cold, cold winter. So when all of a sudden you decide to take it out in February, would you be surprised that the tires don’t grip and the radiator freezes up?
The Texas power industry “bet” on the weather, and they lost. And now the regulators in Texas, like the Governor, are taking the “heat” (or getting the “cold shoulder”) from the millions of Texans left out in the cold without power. So it’s easier to blame Biden, or Ocasio-Cortez, than to take responsibility for their own failures.
Texas wanted cheap energy. And it was cheap for a reason, and not just because it was sitting in the ground for the drilling. They got what they paid for. Bet they wished they’d put a few more dollars in now.
