*Before we jump into today’s newsletter, Texas is in a really bad place right now and a lot of people need help. Check this Twitter thread for a list of organizations to consider donating to.*
My Apple Watch probably thinks I'm dead.
I haven't worn it since Sunday, when the snow and the frigid temperatures hit Texas like we all knew would happen but seemingly without a clue what would happen next.
And also, that's a lie. I haven't worn my Apple Watch, but Apple (of course) has tracked me the entire time through my iPhone and AirPods and Macbooks. Our power, for some reason, hasn't gone out yet. Everything is fully charged.
I primarily use my Apple Watch as a daily activity tracker, but since the streets and outdoors have been rendered useless and the temperatures have remained low, I haven’t worn it. No worries! We'll be back to highs in the 60s, come Sunday!
Sunday is just three days away of course; the people of Texas are more than halfway through the worst of the weather and past the zero degree nights. The snow will be fully melted by Saturday. And yet we won't yet know the physical, economic, and psychological damage done nor will the damage be fixed for quite some time.
I'll admit that last week I had a cavalier, smug Northern outlook when predictions of multiple winter storms and days of freezing conditions hit the news. Surely those in charge would be on top of it all if, indeed, something more catastrophic was coming our way. This is me admitting my ignorance.
What I failed to realize is how the buildings here are built to let heat out. Our heating and cooling systems are optimized for summers. That so many people, through no fault of their own, didn't know how to protect their pipes and water (and in a lot of cases, even that wouldn't matter).
Texas has its own power grid, where as the rest of the contiguous states were split into two grids. Why? Because Texas just can’t stand the federal government. And so if that grid goes down, well, it's on Texas to make it right. And if Texas energy can't make it right, then what? Well, here we are: Texas' predominantly fossil-fuel energy system is basically frozen. Millions now suffer for days in weather, and a situation, they've never experienced and didn't have to experience so drastically.
This one story in the Dallas Morning News alone highlights that:
People are dying in fires caused by trying to stay warm
Peoples are dying from or going to the hospital for carbon monoxide poisoning, after they sit in warm cars in their garage, or use their stove for heat
Burst residential pipes are wreaking havoc in homes across the state
Some cities are telling residents to stop using water. Here's an actual quote from a city official in a city of 45,000 people: "Water should only be used to sustain life at this point"
Other cities are asking residents to boil their water before drinking
Firefighters are watching houses burn because there isn't enough water pressure for their hoses
How grim is that? How brutally unfair is that?
The policymakers, state leaders, and this whole fear-of-regulation system they set up has turned Texas into an unprecedented disaster in the middle of an unprecedented disaster. Gov. Greg Abbot, ERCOT (the organization that operates the grid), Republican lawmakers, and Texas' energy industry created a Russian nesting-doll of suffering and death. This, after Republicans at the federal level created just a Macy's parade-sized doll of suffering of death with the coronavirus response.
Could they have prevented the storm? Obviously not. But the lack of communication, preparation, support, and resources they gave to the people of Texas leading up to this is unconscionable. Except this is by design. This is what fierce de-regulation and platitudes of freedom and liberty get you. Sometimes they might sound innocuous on a rainy day. But in a true climate emergency—that they saw coming, for weeks—it becomes cruel and deadly. Only then will the feign interest in people.
The freedom defenders will posit that individuals should know better, prepare better, and make accommodations for themselves. Which is to say: they don't care about you. This is not an anomaly in their system. This is the system. This entire political, economic, and physical infrastructure is designed this way. After Texas had a massive winter storm with blackouts in 2011, the federal government strongly recommended weather-proofing our power infrastructure. But Texas, beholden to nobody, moved forward like nothing happened. And here we are. It happened again. Only worse.
And lest you think I'm "playing politics" in the middle of an emergency, spare me. Determining who and what is responsible for a calamity is not playing politics. It just so happens that at every step of the way, one political side and one industry made the decisions and the infrastructure that got us here. I won't dig into how confident I am that current leadership "on the other side of the aisle" will be able to make systemic changes, but you can probably guess that.
Unfortunately, this is very much a "welcome to Texas" moment for me. I've only been here for four-and-a-half years. Lifelong residents, of course, know the red politics and oil-driven laissez-faire economics of the state. I suppose my living in Dallas instead of a place like Fort Worth, for example, somehow planted the seed in my head that somehow, some way, given a scenario like what happened this week, the outcomes would be different.
But now that's hard to believe in the middle of incalculable suffering that seems to only be accelerating in lieu of systemic change at the federal and state level. Our most vulnerable people are becoming more vulnerable. Our climate more unpredictable and destructive. Some are content merely watching how it plays out, with privilege. Others are fighting, sometimes out of necessity, life or death. For racial justice. For equal treatment. For equal pay. But the oppressed alone can't—and shouldn't—be responsible for overturning an oppressive system.
I don't think I have a moral to today's story. I sat down to write about how I haven't used my Apple Watch in days and I was somehow going to connect that to technology and culture and what that meant, and the general topics of this newsletter. Oh, and then how I wanted to go on a run. And that in just a few days, this snow and this freezing weather will be gone. A week of frigid destruction followed by highs in the 60s.
But maybe that's the point. Cruel politics, cruel policy, and power-for-power's sake can impact communities and nations with a slow burn temperatures ebb-and-flow over years and decades and centuries. They can also incite a raging fire.
In the end, they destroy. The current pace is accelerating.
It's happening on our watch.
Extreme Weather Warnings [No. 085]