{"id":48530,"date":"2021-02-22T08:56:44","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T08:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=133348"},"modified":"2021-02-22T08:56:44","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T08:56:44","slug":"gop-offers-preview-of-brutal-climate-policies-in-texas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/22\/gop-offers-preview-of-brutal-climate-policies-in-texas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Offers Preview of Brutal Climate Policies in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photograph Source: Jason Thibault – CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

As Texas battles a severe snowstorm and mass power outages this winter, Tim Boyd, the now-former Republican mayor of Colorado City, revealed his party\u2019s plan for the deadly extreme temperatures linked to climate change<\/a>. In a lengthy Facebook post<\/a> that was deleted soon after it went viral, then-Mayor Boyd told his residents that they were entirely on their own<\/a> as the brutal winter weather<\/a> caused mayhem and deaths across the Lone Star state.<\/p>\n

His honesty was like catching a glimpse of a rare animal in the wild. \u201cSink or swim[,] it\u2019s your choice!\u201d he wrote, without bothering to couch his words in euphemisms. Boyd added, \u201cThe City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING!\u201d For such an exhortation to come from the elected leader of a city\u2014a man literally chosen by his people to ensure that local government works for them\u2014was shocking.<\/p>\n

Just as they pay their mayor, Colorado City\u2019s residents also pay authorities to provide them with basic necessities like electricity and water. But apparently, Boyd thought an expectation of services was out of line. He conjectured, \u201cIf you don\u2019t have electricity you step up and come up with a game plan to keep your family warm and safe.\u201d Many Texans have tried to do just that, running their car engine in their garage to warm their homes. So far in Harris County, there have been at least 50 cases of carbon monoxide poisoning<\/a> and several people have died.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have no water you deal without and think outside of the box to survive and supply water to your family,\u201d posited Boyd, expecting Texans who were searching for ways to provide their own electricity to also deal with a lack of water as pipes froze<\/a> in the plummeting temperatures.<\/p>\n

Boyd\u2019s diatribe veered into familiar Republican territory as he blamed residents for their own plight by saying, \u201cIf you are sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your (sic) lazy [it] is [a] direct result of your raising.\u201d It is a long-simmering idea among conservatives that Americans who depend on their government are simply lazy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Generally, white conservatives have reserved the word \u201clazy\u201d for people of color who are victims of systemic racial discrimination. Indeed, the weather-related blackouts in Texas impacted the residents of minority neighborhoods<\/a> disproportionately. Boyd and those who share his views would likely assume this must have been a direct result of their laziness.<\/p>\n

Hours<\/a> after writing his screed, Boyd announced his resignation and apologized<\/a>. But he qualified his apology by saying that he never meant to imply that the helpless elderly were the lazy ones\u2014just everyone else. \u201cI was only making the statement that those folks that are too lazy to get up and fend for themselves but are capable should not be dealt a handout,\u201d he wrote in a manner that suggested he was \u201csorry, not sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most Republicans are not as overt as Boyd in their faith in social Darwinism. Take Texas Governor Greg Abbott<\/a>, who instead of openly blaming Texans for their own suffering instead decided to blame climate-mitigating policies and renewable energy programs like wind power. Speaking on Fox News, Abbott railed against the \u201cGreen New Deal,\u201d claiming that a reliance on wind turbines was disastrous because the state\u2019s wind-generated power \u201cthrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis.\u201d For good measure, he added, \u201cIt just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conservative Wall Street Journal, which has long been hostile to tackling climate change through renewable energy, repeated this claim in an editorial<\/a> blaming \u201cstricter emissions regulation\u201d and the loss of coal-powered plants for widespread misery in the snow-blanketed South.<\/p>\n

In fact, millions of Texans are going without power because of the Republican emphasis on cheap power over reliable power<\/a>. Seeing electricity generation as a profit-making enterprise rather than the fulfillment of a public need, GOP policies in Texas have made the state vulnerable to such mass outages. Moreover, plenty of wintry areas successfully run wind turbines<\/a> when properly prepared to do so. And, Abbott did not see fit to point out that harsh winter temperatures lead to frozen natural gas pipelines<\/a>\u2014the real culprit in the outages.<\/p>\n

Even as a majority of Texans<\/a> now believe that climate change is really happening, their governor in late January vowed<\/a> to \u201cprotect the oil and gas industry from any type of hostile attack from Washington.\u201d Apparently protecting Texans from the ravages of the fossil fuel industry is not in his purview. This is hardly surprising given how much fossil fuel industry contributions<\/a> have ensured Abbott\u2019s loyalty to oil and gas interests.<\/p>\n

The conservative mindset can be counted on to prioritize private interests over public ones. In a Republican utopia, the rich are noble and deserving of basic necessities, comforts, and life itself. If they have rigged the system to benefit themselves, it means they are smart, not conniving. In the future that Republicans promise, \u201cOnly the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic),\u201d as per Boyd\u2019s post. In other words, our lives are expendable, and if we die, it is because we deserve it and were simply not smart enough to survive.<\/p>\n

This was utterly predictable. Republicans have used this same approach on health care\u2014think of all the Republican governors who backed lawsuits against the Affordable Care Act<\/a> and opted their states out of the federal government\u2019s Medicaid<\/a> program even though a majority<\/a> of Americans support Obamacare. Even more Americans support the government nationalizing health care,<\/a> but Republicans warn that if the program is expanded from Medicare for those over 65<\/a> to all Americans, it will suddenly become \u201csocialism\u201d and thus \u201cevil.\u201d Their solution for health care is the status quo of a deregulated \u201cWild West\u201d private insurance market.<\/p>\n

Republicans have offered a similar approach to the coronavirus pandemic where any public safety standards set by the government are anathema to \u201cpersonal freedoms<\/a>,\u201d even though a majority of Americans<\/a> support such precautions. It is also how Republicans have approached poverty and rising inequality: by opposing a federal government increase to the minimum wage even though most Americans<\/a> want a floor of $15 an hour.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Republicans believe strongly in the idea of \u201cbig government\u201d when it comes to regulating their pet social issues such as harsh anti-immigrant measures and attacks on abortion. (Meanwhile, most Americans<\/a> support a pathway to legalization for the undocumented and a majority<\/a> supports reproductive choice.)<\/p>\n

As Americans are subject to the brutal impacts of inevitable climate change, we face a clear choice: strong government intervention to save our lives, or a \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d dystopia that contemporary conservatism promises. The Texas debacle is a preview of what is to come if the free-marketeers have their way while the climate changes. The nation\u2019s conservative party went from insisting that climate change does not exist (it is a \u201choax!\u201d<\/a>) to shrugging their shoulders and telling us, as Boyd did, that we\u2019re on our own when the consequences hit.<\/p>\n

This article was produced by Economy for All<\/i><\/a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

The post GOP Offers Preview of Brutal Climate Policies in Texas<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Texas battles a severe snowstorm and mass power outages this winter, Tim Boyd, the now-former Republican mayor of Colorado City, revealed his party\u2019s plan for the deadly extreme temperatures linked to climate change. In a lengthy Facebook post that was deleted soon after it went viral, then-Mayor Boyd told his residents that they were More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post GOP Offers Preview of Brutal Climate Policies in Texas<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48530"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48530"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48921,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48530\/revisions\/48921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}