MSNBC Chris Hayes offered by dismantling a born narrative of the right-wing press that an over-reliance on green or renewable energy is the main cause of catastrophic disruptions in Texas.
On Tuesday night, Hayes began his show by airing a series of clips from Fox news programs and 24-hour opinion shows, all of which blamed everything from frozen windmills to hesitant solar panels for massive power outages after record low temperatures in this state.
“This is a terrible situation, it is driven by a complex confluence of factors,” Hayes said. “But, of course, Fox News and other Republicans saw some kind of suffering, some kind of problem somewhere, and immediately, without missing a beat, they immediately tried to turn it into a cultural war, in this case against those hippy liberal bastards and their clean energy. ”
When California was disrupted last summer, Hayes pointed out that conservative media and Republican politicians mocked “liberal California” for pursuing foolish energy policies.
“Imagine how stupid it would be to think it’s your audience, the contempt you have to hold, look in the room and try to sell them with the idea that windmills don’t work when it’s cold,” Hayes replied to that idea. “After Texas, Iowa is the state with the largest wind power in the country. If you’ve ever been to Iowa in the winter, I can tell you from personal experience that it’s pretty cold in Iowa. Denmark gets almost half of its energy from wind energy. I don’t know if you were looking for this, someone from Fox News, but Denmark, a very cold place in winter. ”
In fact, said the host of MSNBC, the agency that controls the electricity grid in Texas, explained that frozen wind farms are “the least significant factor” for massive disruptions. In an article in Bloomberg, one of the agency’s senior executives said that the first culprits of millions of powerless people were frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and even nuclear power plants, many of which failed to winter their facilities.
“It’s just a lie that wind turbines, green energy, are the root cause of Texas’ problems right now,” Hayes said. “It’s a lie as if Donald Trump won the election, a lie as if there were widespread electoral fraud, a lie pumped into the brains of millions of people while watching television. And let’s be clear, this is probably as consistent a lie as any election, because the energy and the way we produce it is the biggest problem this country will face in the medium term. ”
“Republicans and the right-wing media want to take all political issues and turn them into a painful idiocy of cultural warfare,” he continued. “Fossil fuel companies want that too. They want it to turn into a cultural war, just as the Libyans don’t want you to have power. We have an opportunity, we have a collective choice as a country. We must not have policies about where we share our energy on abortion or the police. There is no reason for this to be connected. We can create a modern energy infrastructure that is more resilient to climate change and also cheaper and also serves people better and also can withstand extreme weather events and also does not heat the planet until we are not in difficult situations. We can do all this. In fact, there is a lot of wonderful news on this front. But the biggest obstacle will be these charlatans who will take every opportunity to lie to people for profit and power. ”
Watch the video above via MSNBC.
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