Author and environmentalist Naomi Klein argued in a New York Times column Sunday that Republicans rushed to attack the Green New Deal as disaster struck in Texas because the popular push for a sweeping transformation of the U.S. energy system poses a genuine threat to the deregulated, fossil-fuel dependent status quo that left the Lone Star State vulnerable to extreme weather driven by the climate crisis.
“Texans are living through the collapse of a 40-year experiment in free-market fundamentalism, one that has also stood in the way of effective climate action,” Klein wrote. “Fortunately, there’s a way out—and that’s precisely what Republican politicians in the state most fear.”
Klein characterized the ongoing power, water, and food crises in Texas as the consequence of “an energy-market free-for-all” stemming from “a fateful series of decisions [that] were made in the late-’90s, when the now-defunct, scandal-plagued energy company Enron led a successful push to radically deregulate Texas’ electricity sector.” Continue reading.