Opinion Analysis by Francesco Pitzalis, Staff Writer

February 24th, 2021

On the 13th of February, Storm Uri froze over Texas in an unprecedented spell of Winter weather. The result: 4.4 million Texans were left without power and over 60 perished from the bone-chilling temperatures. Instead of benefiting from constructive bi-partisan rhetoric, Texans faced climate change denial, slander of green energy and an unconscionable dereliction of duty by Texas senator, Ted Cruz. Indeed, post-truth politics energy policy and extreme libertarianism have left Texans literally and figuratively out in the cold. Welcome to the wild west.

The Texan deep freeze was triggered by sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) in arctic regions. This disrupted global weather systems by weakening a jet stream known as the “polar night jet”. The polar night jet encapsulates cold polar air at high latitudes, separating it from warmer air at lower latitudes. When this temperature differential between polar and temperate climates is lessened by SSW, the polar night jet weakens and cold air spills southwards (see figure 1). In brief, cold air is straight-jacketed at northerly latitudes by the Polar night jet. When the polar night jet is compromised by sudden stratospheric warming, you open the freezer door. 

Enter storm Uri, plunging continental-sized regions of north America into a brutal cold snap. Not least, the lone star state, which plummeted to -19 degrees Celsius in Dallas-Fort Worth and experienced 30 cm of snow in many regions. For a rambunctious climate change denier, a cold snap during global warming is a flagrant “myth-busting” paradox. Donald Trump famously welcomed “good old fashioned global warming” amid snowstorms in New York. For those of us who can distinguish between “climate” and “weather” this doesn’t change a thing. Indeed, scientists have noted that climate change can increase the average temperature of winters, whilst increasing the frequency of cold events at the extremes. 

This extreme weather elicited power outages for over 4.4 million Texans over the past  few days. Now here is the real paradox; Texas happens to be the Fossil fuel capital of the United States. A beacon of non-renewable energy production… switched off by a few snowflakes. Naturally, the Republicans couldn’t bear it, with Fox news commentator Tucker Carlson blaming frozen “windmills” for the chaos ( wind turbines to you and me). Texas Governor Greg Abbott also claimed that the “green new deal” was a “deadly deal” behind the blackouts. 

This rhetoric is needless to say, straight out of a spaghetti western. The democrat-sponsored green new deal has not even come into force yet. Likewise, 95% of Texan energy is produced from non-renewable resources. Consequently, the state suffered from its failure to weatherise these energy systems to the cold. Don’t take it from me though, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) stated that the outages were “primarily due to issues on the natural gas system” and that non-renewable energy was responsible for “nearly twice as many power outages as renewables.”

Then there is Senator Ted Cruz, who smugly proclaimed in 2016: “I will believe in climate change when Texas freezes over.” After Texas actually froze over, the Texan senator hot-stepped to Cancun at the peak of  the crisis. For his supporters, the obvious defence was “can Ted make it warm out?”. Can a Doctor cure cancer? In either case when faced with crisis, you don’t slip on a Hawaiian shirt and catch a few rays on the Mexican coast. There is always something to be done; ask New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who raised $5 million for Texas.

All of these blunders existed in the cauldron of Texan-style Libertarianism. Individual freedoms before everything; independent even of the weather. Total individual freedom conversely requires total individual responsibility. Alas, this was exemplified by former Colorado city Mayor Tim Boyd who maintained: “The city and country... or any other service, owes you nothing.” Boyd also gave his constituents a lesson in Darwinian Biology for their troubles,  “only the strong will survive and the weak will perish”. 

Whilst no one is denying the paramount importance of individual freedoms, you can take it too far. Extreme individualism thwarts responsibility of the collective, be it to combat a pandemic or climate change. This is the true meaning of wild west libertarianism - freedom to infect someone with coronavirus, freedom to stage an armed rally to “stop the steal” and freedom to freeze your socks off.