A freak winter storm slammed into Texas,
causing blackouts for millions of people.
And usually when there are blackouts in America,
things go back to normal in a couple of hours
and it's not a big deal.
You light some candles, you grab some flashlights,
and then you tell a scary story
about the woman who married the ghost of a little boy.
But in Texas, many people are still waiting
for the heat to come back on three days later,
and things stopped being fun a long time ago.
NEWSMAN: This morning, a deadly winter blast
tearing across the country from Mississippi to Maine
for a third straight day.
NEWSWOMAN: In Texas, the freezing temperatures
knocking out power to more than four million customers.
Power's out. Water's out.
There's no firewood anywhere. No stores open.
NEWSMAN 2: Residents using blow-dryers and heaters
to thaw their frozen pipes.
WOMAN: No water.
NEWSMAN: Enduring freezing temperatures
any way they can,
some dangerously using cars or grills for heat.
NEWSMAN 3: For the millions bundled up with no electricity,
this has been life for days.
MAN: In this room in our house, it is 33 degrees.
NEWSMAN 3: In Austin, Andrew Leahy and his wife
finding ways to keep warm.
You'll see a blanket here and blue Scotch tape.
We're doing anything possible to keep the heat in.
All right, people, this, no matter what anybody says,
is awful.
I know people were praying for Texas to go blue,
but not like this.
I mean, is it too much to ask
for just one apocalypse at a time?
You know, COVID is bad enough,
but now Texans have to deal with their homes
turning into meat lockers?
This shit is unfair.
The pipes are frozen.
Temperatures are below zero.
Ice is everywhere.
Forget Texans. This would be too much for Elsa.
? Let it go. ? "Hell, no.
This some bullshit. I'm going to Aruba."
I mean, you saw that newsclip.
Some people are putting up Scotch tape and blankets.
That's not how people should keep heat in their house.
That's how you hide the weed smell from your RA.
Now, what's been so devastating about this blackout
is that when the electricity went out,
it affected everything.
People were struggling to get heat.
They're still struggling to get food,
and they're struggling to get water.
Now, luckily for them, their leaders have stepped up
in their time of need to tell them to stop bitching.
Now a story making headlines nationwide.
The mayor of Colorado City, Tim Boyd,
has resigned after getting backlash
over a Facebook post yesterday.
In that post, he wrote, it is...
He said those without power or water
should "step up and come up with a game plan to stay safe."
NEWSWOMAN: He says, "The city, county,
"along with power providers owe you nothing"
and "Only the strong will survive.
The weak will perish."
Damn! Okay.
I mean, that's one way to be a leader,
just telling your people to fend for themselves
during a disaster.
That's some next level.
You know, even Immortan Joe sprayed his people
with water once in a while.
He's like, "I've got a heart. Come on."
Like, here's a question.
Why did this guy even want to be a mayor
if he didn't want to help people?
You don't become a doctor and then tell people,
"Transplant your own liver, bitches!
"Why do I got to do everything, huh?!
I'm a doctor!"
Now, the good news is the backlash was so fierce
that this mayor immediately resigned.
And, honestly, it's probably safer for him
now that he's gone.
Because if you think frostbite is bad on your nose,
whew, you should see what it does to an exposed asshole.
Now, after the people of Texas
are done DIY'ing their own power plants,
they'll probably want to know
why this catastrophe happened in the first place.
And while freak storms can't be prevented,
it looks like Texas could have done a lot more
to prepare for this eventuality.
NEWSMAN: Officials with the council that manages
most of Texas' grid, uh, says
that outages are due to the state's natural gas suppliers
not being able to tolerate such low temperatures.
Power plants are not performing as expected,
especially natural gas-fired power plants in Texas right now.
Many of the thermal power plants,
like natural gas-fired power plants,
coal-fired power plants,
and at least one nuclear unit
are not, um, producing energy.
They're-they're suffering outages.
Some people would point to the fact that, uh,
Texas had its power supply deregulated back in the '90s,
and you would say-- critics say
that because of these businesses were focusing on profits,
uh, they were not necessarily concerned with maintenance
and/or winterizing the equipment
to prepare for worst-case scenarios
like we're experiencing right now.
NEWSWOMAN: Texas is the only state
to use its own independent power grid.
That means it does not have federal regulations
that might have better prepared Texas for an event like this.
That's right. The main reason Texas has plunged into darkness
is that its natural gas industry has been crippled by this storm.
And that might, might have been preventable,
except that Texas deregulated its power supply in the '90s,
which was clearly not the wisest decision.
I mean, trust me,
as a man who lived through the '90s,
you should probably rethink most of the decisions you made
in that decade.
But, you see, this deregulation
led to a lack of oversight that could have helped
to keep the infrastructure maintained.
But, instead, for some reason,
there are more people keeping tabs on Britney Spears
than the Texas power grid.
And this just goes to show you
you can't put profits over quality and safety.
Money's not worth a whole lot
if you have to burn it to keep warm.
Look, the fact of the matter is,
this situation is kind of embarrassing for Texas' leaders.
I mean, this is the state that prides itself
on its oil and gas industry,
and now that industry has failed spectacularly.
This would be like Jason Momoa needing help
opening a pickle jar.
Which is probably why state officials
and their allies on cable news
are working so hard to blame someone else.
NEWSWOMAN: The blackouts that are in Texas
are being made worse by the failure of wind turbines,
many freezing in the icy weather,
cutting output in half.
And it's raising questions about the Lone Star State's
increasing reliance on renewable energy.
Energy-producing wind turbines are freezing, not working.
The windmills failed,
like the silly fashion accessories they are,
and people in Texas died.
Think about if-if we were in the AOC world.
Fast-forward ten years
and-and everything is solar,
everything is wind.
If you don't have power to keep you warm,
you're gonna-- you're gonna-- you're gonna die.
A preview of what could happen
if the AOC vision were reified throughout the United States.
This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal
for the United States of America.
Okay, this?
This is (bleep) insane.
These guys are so desperate
to just let fossil fuels off the hook
that they're blaming AOC and the Green New Deal--
which, by the way, hasn't even happened yet--
for something that's happening in Texas right now?
But this just goes to show you--
no matter what happens,
no matter how far removed she is from the problem,
conservatives can and will always find a way
to blame the boogeyman, AOC.
Rick Perry could have broken his arm as a kid
and he would've blamed it on AOC.
"Aah! My arm!
Damn you, AOC!"
"Uh, who's AOC, kid?"
"She just hasn't been born yet.
But you wait. You'll see."
Now, look, we can have an honest conversation about this
and acknowledge that it is true
that many wind turbines in the state
did freeze during the storm.
But it's also fair to acknowledge
that these wind turbines only account for 12%
of the lost power in the state.
Placing all the blame on wind power here
is like blaming the Jets' record on the water boy.
I mean, I guess he could have handed out water better,
but I don't think that's why they lost.
And even though these wind turbines failed
in cold weather, that doesn't mean
that wind power is a bad idea.
It just means that Texas didn't have turbines
made for cold weather, the same way
it didn't have oil and gas plants made for cold weather.
I mean, there are cars sliding
all over the roads in Texas right now
because nobody there has snow tires,
but I don't hear the governor saying,
"Wheels are unreliable,
so we need to go back to Flintstone cars."
So, clearly, all this conservative anger at AOC
and green energy, it's disingenuous.
But the good news is it's led to an amazing breakthrough
that might just solve Texas' energy problems forever.
ANNOUNCER: Here at Texas Energon,
we're developing energy that you can always depend on.
Because our new technology draws power
from America's most renewable resource,
the insane hatred of AOC.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
-AOC. -AOC. -(overlapping chatter)
Our environmentally friendly extraction methods
allow our turbines to convert the most paranoid rantings
about Representative Ocasio-Cortez
into consistent power that will never run dry.
If anything, we might get too much energy.
People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
These are important people, whether we like them or not.
They have followings, and people listen to them.
And the future is bright,
because soon our technology
will tap even more pockets of conservative anger,
like cancel culture,
mail-in ballots,
and gay Disney characters.
Texas Energon.
Their hatred is your heat.