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Sept. 23, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
04:33
Everything is Bigger in Texas! Including the Government Incompetence
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The Great Texas Freeze of 2021, given by Jason Isaac, a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Let's hear a minute or so of the beginning.
The week of Valentine's Day, 2021, the temperature dropped below zero.
Nobody could remember it being this cold for this long.
This was Texas, not Siberia.
But Texas is the energy state.
There was nothing to fear.
Just go home, turn on the heat, and hunker down.
That's how it should have gone.
Instead, over five days, four million Texans lost power during what turned out to be the coldest winter storm in half a century.
Hundreds died, including an 11-year-old boy who froze to death in his sleep.
The state's electric grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, later reported the state was just four minutes away from total grid collapse.
The media was quick to blame the state government for not being fully prepared and not acting fast enough.
This may be true, but ERCOT's mistakes were symptoms, not the cause of the problem.
The real cause is decades of misguided policies that have left the Lone Star State with an unreliable energy infrastructure.
It's a cautionary tale that the rest of the country needs to learn from.
Alright, let's hold it there and go to my guest, Jason Isaac.
And thank you for coming on the show, Jason.
It's, listening to it again, I realize four million Texans did not have power, is that correct?
That's correct, for several days, mind you, several days.
With freezing temperatures?
Yeah, the coldest temperatures we'd seen for that long of a period for over 50 years.
Right.
Well, before you tell us why it happened, am I right in being somewhat puzzled by the lack of curiosity in America as to how that happened?
Yeah, I think you are.
It's interesting, and I'm in the swamp right now in Washington, D.C., and I've had a lot of members of Congress come up and ask me still about the February freeze and what caused it.
And I let them know that the problem is rooted in market-distorting policies that started in Washington, D.C. And then Texas even passed more of its own to prop up these unreliable electric providers to say that we're number one.
And in Texas, we like to say we're number one.
Everything's bigger in Texas, and unfortunately, we are the number one state for wind-generated electricity.
It's a third of our grid now.
33% of our grid is unreliable, variable, renewable electric generation.
And we've suffered the cost of that in February.
And we found out what's going to happen.
And it's things that have been happening in Germany, things that have been happening in California.
And I think people in Texas woke up and realized that cold weather is much more dangerous than warm weather.
Yeah.
That's right.
Well, far more people continue to die of cold weather in the world than from warm weather.
So, if what you're saying is accurate, then should this happen again in three years, then the exact same thing will happen again in three years.
Yeah, absolutely.
And what's being pushed in Washington, D.C. with this...
Build China Back Better program, the reconciliation package.
It's going to happen all across the grid if this package gets passed.
What has happened in Texas?
Now, I don't think it's going to happen in Texas again because the governor, we had some legislation that we supported and advocated for this past legislative session in Texas.
The governor followed through with a strong executive order telling the Public Utility Commission of Texas to direct...
The cost of unreliable electric generation on the generators themselves, not on the ratepayers.
And it's all pushed down to the ratepayers now.
And so it'll be nice that the generators are going to be the ones that have to pay for reliable electricity.
All right, hold it there for a moment.
This is an incredibly important subject.
ReliefFactor.com, 800-500-8384, my friends.
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