Light Reading for a Sunday: Thoughts on the deep freeze in Texas and the Pandemic.
I sit here, lucky in East Texas, never lost heat or water, and we have had food. But, we are odd in Texas. Much of the state is boiling water, wishing for power, dealing with pipes bursting and empty shelves in the grocery stores. Those that have electricity and ordered from the wrong provider are receiving astronomically high bills ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/texas-storm-electric-bills.html ) rewarding these companies for the scarcity of electricity to heat homes in the middle of freezing temps and ice storms. How did we get here as a rich and growing state? The Texas economy grew because of oil and natural gas, and yet it created its power grid that dis-incented generators to build and upgrade their plants. Under the assumption, the market was a better manager of electricity cost and demand than the government. I read an article on ERCOT, the manager for the Texas grid,( https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/texas-power-outages-ercot/ ) that most of Texas was m