Texas

Texas

Texas could have kept the lights on:

....After a cold snap in 2011, the power companies[in Texas] were supposed to better winterize their plants. Ten years later, they hadn’t done it.

As the cold froze Oklahoma and sent temperatures in Dallas to lows not seen in over a century, the natural gas industry proved unable to deliver more gas even if it was purchased. Wellheads in the Permian Basin froze solid. Pipelines leaked water, which, in turn, turned metal and gas into useless, immovable ice.

The crisis dates back to the 1930s, when the Federal Power Commission gained the authority to regulate interstate transmission of electric power. But politicians in Texas, with their slavish devotion to the fossil fuel industry, didn’t want Washington regulating the electricity business and chipping away at those hefty profits....

Ted Cruz flew to Cancun while Texas froze.