Speaker 1: Fill a conspiracy realist. We're returning with a classic episode.
Speaker 1: Cast your mind back to twenty twenty one, so long ago, now, right, guys,
Speaker 1: it's a yeah, it's a story that takes us to
Speaker 1: an event that captured national attention. As winter storms swept
Speaker 1: through Texas, the people of Texas very quickly found themselves
Speaker 1: without electricity or clean water millions.
Speaker 2: Wasn't this the one where Ted Cruz kind of effed
Speaker 2: off to vacation town when all this was going on,
Speaker 2: very same, I think.
Speaker 3: So, oh, okay, and that's ringing bells.
Speaker 2: Yes, sorry, he was a senator at the time, but yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what's ringing a bell. He went to Cancun.
Speaker 3: Dude, this was the whole Urkat thing, the Electric Reliability
Speaker 3: Council of Texas.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: And we are airing this because although it is a
Speaker 1: discrete instance happened years ago. Now we know that winter
Speaker 1: is coming, not to be all Game of Thrones about it,
Speaker 1: and our question is will Texas be prepared for this winter?
Speaker 3: Oh, especially as those data centers start making their way
Speaker 3: into the big state.
Speaker 2: Let's jump right in.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 4: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Noah.
Speaker 2: They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Speaker 1: Mission control decands. Most importantly, you are here and that
Speaker 1: makes this stuff they don't want you to know. As always,
Speaker 1: this these episodes are for all our fellow conspiracy realist
Speaker 1: out there. Today's episode is especially for our friends and
Speaker 1: family in Texas and for all your friends and family
Speaker 1: in Texas as well. This is an ongoing situation. It's
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of wild, to say the least.
Speaker 1: We've been on an infrastructure kick lately, ever since our
Speaker 1: earlier strange news segment about that hacker in Oldsmar, Florida.
Speaker 1: You know, the one who tried to poison the city
Speaker 1: with lie.
Speaker 4: I believe it was mm HM.
Speaker 2: Which apparently is a thing that goes in water in
Speaker 2: some small amount and he just upped the ante yup.
Speaker 3: And then we talked about the brian that gets produced
Speaker 3: that may be radioactive. No, it is radioactive in making
Speaker 3: energy from fracking and other processes.
Speaker 2: Who new infrastructure could be so terrifying and fascinating, so boring.
Speaker 1: That's why it's a sleeping giant of conspiracy, corruption, and problems. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're reporting for a news site, you know that
Speaker 1: a story about infrastructure probably won't get you a ton
Speaker 1: of clicks or eyeballs. If you are running for office,
Speaker 1: railing about the danger of failing infrastructure probably isn't going
Speaker 1: to do much to help.
Speaker 2: You get elected.
Speaker 1: And if you do fix this stuff, people will usually
Speaker 1: not bother to acknowledge or thank you for maintaining or
Speaker 1: fixing it, not because they're being dicks, but because infrastructure,
Speaker 1: when it works, becomes invisible.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like when you have to buy new
Speaker 2: tires for your car, or like a new battery. That's
Speaker 2: like the least sexy fun purchase ever. You just resent
Speaker 2: it because it's just supposed to work, and when it
Speaker 2: doesn't it makes you angry, and then you resent having
Speaker 2: to spend the money. But then you know it's nice
Speaker 2: when it does work, but then you forget all about it.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, we only notice this stuff or care about it,
Speaker 1: and it breaks when the lights don't come on when
Speaker 1: you flip the switch, when the water doesn't come out
Speaker 1: of the faucet when you turn the knob, and then
Speaker 1: immediately we scramble for someone to blame. It is boring
Speaker 1: as hell to be prepared, but if you ask any
Speaker 1: boy scout or any Texan nowadays, they'll tell you being
Speaker 1: prepared can save lives. Our story today is about the
Speaker 1: ongoing winter storm crisis in Texas. Here are the facts
Speaker 1: to figure out what happened. You know, first, this storm
Speaker 1: was not restricted to Texas. It hit parts of northern Mexico.
Speaker 1: It hit huge swaths of the US and the rest
Speaker 1: of the North American continent. But Texas had a unique
Speaker 1: situation due to their power grid. And there's an old
Speaker 1: story behind this, right, a.
Speaker 2: Story that begins in Texas in the dawn of the
Speaker 2: previous century. In the years following the construction of the
Speaker 2: first US power plant by Thomas Edison in Manhattan in
Speaker 2: eighteen eighty two, small plants started popping up again. Maybe
Speaker 2: that's where plants came from, because they're like plants popping
Speaker 2: up around different areas of the nation, including Texas. And
Speaker 2: as time went on, these utilities began to become interconnected
Speaker 2: to one another, and the phenomenon of this interconnectedness accelerated
Speaker 2: during the First World War because it was.
Speaker 3: Necessary absolutely, and expansion continued, more and more folks living
Speaker 3: further and further away from city centers. And guess what
Speaker 3: in World War Two? That expansion continued and the interconnectedness
Speaker 3: grew more connected, solidified. I don't know what we want
Speaker 3: to call it, more connecting, yes, yes, And something else
Speaker 3: interesting happened during the World War two times here in
Speaker 3: the US, specifically out Texas Way utilities there in Texas
Speaker 3: began joining together too. Ben, you've written in the isline
Speaker 3: here vultronning up. And I love that that concept of
Speaker 3: all of the different plants and electrical minigrids, they're just
Speaker 3: vultroning to become one giant. What's what's bigger than a
Speaker 3: megawatt or ki gigawatts.
Speaker 2: Or perhaps for our younger listeners, power rangering up, becoming
Speaker 2: a megatron of.
Speaker 1: Sorts, right, or they assembled the Avengers. Look, we spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time megazored. Yes, yeah, uh so they
Speaker 1: formed something collectively known as the Texas Interconnected System. Let's
Speaker 1: call it the TIS for the sake of brevity. This
Speaker 1: had some tremendous advantages in the beginning, both for the
Speaker 1: businesses and for the customers. First, it allowed these this
Speaker 1: network really allowed for the transmission of extra electricity to
Speaker 1: these factories that have massively ramped up production for the
Speaker 1: war effort. They're working around the clock. You gotta feed
Speaker 1: the machine. But second, in the longer term, it allowed
Speaker 1: these utilities to link to ginormous dams along Texas rivers.
Speaker 1: And this is where our first plot twist starts. So
Speaker 1: for a very long time, this TIS was actually a
Speaker 1: group name for two distinct entities, one in northern Texas,
Speaker 1: one in southern Texas. They were different, but they worked
Speaker 1: together because they were on the same page about pretty
Speaker 1: much everything. They had one primary ulterior motive, and it
Speaker 1: was not to provide the best service to customers what right.
Speaker 1: Their ulterior motive was to stay independent from larger oversights,
Speaker 1: avoid the constraints and big brotherhood and those silly regulations
Speaker 1: that come in at the federal level.
Speaker 2: Which is a thing kind of at the heart of
Speaker 2: like Texas history, right, I mean that they've always kind
Speaker 2: of threatened to secede from the Union or formed their
Speaker 2: own you know, mega state or whatever it seems to be.
Speaker 2: That that autonomy and that fear or resentment of big
Speaker 2: government is very much ingrained into the history of the
Speaker 2: state of Texas.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, and remember another thing. There's a reason
Speaker 3: it's called Texas tea oil that is black goal.
Speaker 5: There's a reason.
Speaker 3: It's because that's a resource that is all over the
Speaker 3: place in Texas and has been for a long time.
Speaker 3: And that meant that being independent from the other larger
Speaker 3: systems across North America was easier for Texas, right, because
Speaker 3: they've got so much natural energy already existing there, not
Speaker 3: just oil too. Well.
Speaker 2: Also, they don't want anyone coming in and drinking up their.
Speaker 1: Milkshake, right, Yeah, they've got Texas is a resource rich
Speaker 1: state in a resource rich country. They don't just have oil,
Speaker 1: they have natural gas and coal, and natural gas plays
Speaker 1: a big part in today's story. There was a really
Speaker 1: interesting study I read a number of years ago about
Speaker 1: which US states could function autonomously, like just in terms
Speaker 1: of providing resources for the people who already lived there
Speaker 1: other than geopolitical about it. And you know, California is
Speaker 1: on that list, but Texas is on that list too.
Speaker 1: It's a big, big place with a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: very climate. You know, a ton of agriculture as well.
Speaker 1: So with all this, with all these resources already at
Speaker 1: their fingertips, the powers that be in Texas were able
Speaker 1: to fuel their power plants with in state resources. This
Speaker 1: was very important because it meant that they had encapsulated
Speaker 1: this industry all within the state lines.
Speaker 2: On both ends.
Speaker 1: They were kind of think of it as like growing
Speaker 1: or harvesting their own power. And then they also only
Speaker 1: sending it to places in Texas. That's the way they
Speaker 1: wanted it because otherwise Uncle Sam gets involved and makes
Speaker 1: you do silly things like be prepared. Back in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who's the president at the time,
Speaker 1: signed something called the Federal Power Act into law. This
Speaker 1: gave an outfit called the Federal Power Commission the ability
Speaker 1: slash mandate to oversee all interstate electricity sales. The Federal
Speaker 1: Energy Regulatory Commission replaced it, and they currently handle all
Speaker 1: this stuff today. So what was Texas's solution to what
Speaker 1: they saw as federal overreach? Just never cross the state line.
Speaker 1: Just don't ever do it, and then we will be
Speaker 1: fine here with our lone star approach to energy and
Speaker 1: the rest of you, you other forty nine states. Well,
Speaker 1: there weren't fifty at that point. Can continue your own
Speaker 1: song and dance, just leave us out of it.
Speaker 2: It makes me think of something Hank Hill I'd say,
Speaker 2: is like, Wow, would I ever want to leave Texas? Exactly?
Speaker 3: Well, and also, good luck to you Hawaii and Alaska.
Speaker 3: Good look getting power lines out to where you are.
Speaker 1: Hah right, The caption says laughs in Texan. Yes, So,
Speaker 1: Texas flirted with the idea of regulation at various points,
Speaker 1: and until the nineteen seventies they have virtually no regulation.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy, something probably heard a lot of in
Speaker 1: the news recently was formed. It's the Energy Reliability Council
Speaker 1: of Texas or Urkott. Not to be confused as we
Speaker 1: discussed earlier with Ergot poisoning or EPCOT at Disney. Urkott
Speaker 1: is not as bad as Ergot poisoning, and it is
Speaker 1: probably not as fun to visit there as it is
Speaker 1: to visit Epcott. So I feel like that's a very
Speaker 1: fair way, a fair spectrum. You put Urkott off.
Speaker 3: For sure, Well, you definitely can't get a Belgian beer
Speaker 3: while walking around parts of Urkot. I don't think it
Speaker 3: works that way.
Speaker 1: You're right, that's true. You also probably won't get spasms, diarrhea, mania, psychosis, headaches, nausea, vomiting.
Speaker 2: Desquamation not EPCOT.
Speaker 5: That's not epcot.
Speaker 1: That's not epcot.
Speaker 2: That's not that's not what I got's about, man.
Speaker 1: Desquamation is a grizzly word of the day. It's it's
Speaker 1: its street name is skin peeling. Anyway, anyway, before I
Speaker 1: take us two far down the wrong rabbit hole. Urkott
Speaker 1: was formed largely in reaction to a massive blackout in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen sixty five, which some of our listeners
Speaker 1: may may remember. When Texas went back to deregulation in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, this agency, this institution, Urkott, assumed additional responsibilities,
Speaker 1: and the entire time they kept that old, that old goal.
Speaker 1: They stayed beyond the reach of the FEDS. There were
Speaker 1: complications because the thing about these sorts of grand, multi
Speaker 1: generational schemes with many moving parts is they never work
Speaker 1: out one hundred percent. I wish people would just say
Speaker 1: that at the top of this kind of stuff. They
Speaker 1: never work out one hundred percent. There are always exceptions,
Speaker 1: there are always missteps, there are always plot twists, and
Speaker 1: over the years, Texas itself has breached its energy independence
Speaker 1: a couple of times out of necessity, I would say, yep.
Speaker 2: Once it happened during World War Two, when special provisions
Speaker 2: were made to link Texas to other grids and time
Speaker 2: of crisis obviously makes sense. Glad they went along with it,
Speaker 2: but I guess they could probably have had their arms
Speaker 2: twisted as well. Then there's nineteen seventy six, during an
Speaker 2: event known as a very sexy event name the Midnight Connection.
Speaker 1: It's also our that's the inspiration for our stuff. They'll
Speaker 1: want you to know R and B band.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, And that was when a Texas utility on
Speaker 2: purpose flipped a switch and sent power to Oklahoma, just
Speaker 2: for a few hours. And this was what the Feds
Speaker 2: were hoping for, and it set off a massive legal
Speaker 2: battle that could have brought Texas to their knees in
Speaker 2: terms of, you know, power autonomy under federal regulators. Ultimately,
Speaker 2: Texas did win the day and ended up staying off
Speaker 2: those larger grids.
Speaker 3: And this wasn't the only event. That's one of the
Speaker 3: big ones, right, there's several others, and Texas ended up
Speaker 3: in a bit of a have your cake and eat
Speaker 3: it too situation. I love the concept there. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 3: the state started getting some power from Mexico during another
Speaker 3: set of issues where they were rolling blackouts where they
Speaker 3: kind of had to force some people to go without
Speaker 3: power in order to get power to the places that
Speaker 3: it needed to be.
Speaker 2: The expression and have your cake and eat it too
Speaker 2: is always really fascinating me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It makes me think of Schrodinger's cat. We call it
Speaker 2: like it's there and not there at the same time,
Speaker 2: which is to referra to that as Shirtinger's cake.
Speaker 3: I like that, and we we say it this way,
Speaker 3: having your cake and eating it too. Because this connection
Speaker 3: to Mexico a couple this one connection that we just
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier. It means that Texas right now does have
Speaker 3: several power connections to Mexico as well as to the
Speaker 3: larger energy grid in the United States. But it doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that they're being regulated by the FEDS. They've they've
Speaker 3: they've still got some regulation when it comes to RKAT,
Speaker 3: that Energy and Reliability Group that we're talking about here,
Speaker 3: they are kind of looked over in a way. It's
Speaker 3: kind of strange when you read some of the some
Speaker 3: of the ways it works online, but they're they're kind
Speaker 3: of overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. And
Speaker 3: I only say kind of because it feels a little
Speaker 3: strange sometimes at least from an outside perspective about who
Speaker 3: is actually in charge in many situations.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, because we talked a little bit about the
Speaker 1: territoriality of different stakeholders in the energy industry. The Public
Speaker 1: Utilities Commission has been accused of being toothless in the past,
Speaker 1: and that's why you see Urkott getting a lot of
Speaker 1: the a lot of the spotlight of infamy and controversy
Speaker 1: right now. Urkott does have They have three ties to Mexico,
Speaker 1: two ties to the larger Eastern Grid. The US think
Speaker 1: of it in terms of three big grids for the country.
Speaker 1: They're not very creative with the names. One is the
Speaker 1: Western Interconnection, one is the Eastern Interconnection, and the other
Speaker 1: one is Texas. Ninety percent of Texas falls under the
Speaker 1: purview of Urkot, and well, as I think we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the parts of Texas that were in that ten percent,
Speaker 1: or we're in areas that ha and full deregulated. Whethered
Speaker 1: the literal storm better than their neighbors. So all five
Speaker 1: of those links to these other grids can be used
Speaker 1: to move commercial power, and they can also be used
Speaker 1: in emergencies. But to your point, Matt, they do not
Speaker 1: They do not trigger federal oversight, which is what these
Speaker 1: organizations want. Everything was going fine now under a deregulated market. Yes,
Speaker 1: many people in Texas were paying more for power than
Speaker 1: they would have in a more regulated market, but that
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the priority of these companies. Things start to
Speaker 1: go wrong earlier this month, in early February, the s
Speaker 1: hit the fan. And by s we mean massive winter storms.
Speaker 3: I really thought you're going to say massive winter.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll keep this part in.
Speaker 5: They just or we could just bleep the storms.
Speaker 2: Remember that line from that robot voice track on Okay Computer.
Speaker 2: He literally says froze and winters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, So let's keep this whole thing.
Speaker 1: So there was this, because we'll need the levity in
Speaker 1: a second, there was an unprecedented Matt. You've heard there
Speaker 1: was a massive storm. There were actually two. There was
Speaker 1: a pair of winter storms that caused record low temperatures
Speaker 1: across the state. First one hits February tenth through February eleventh,
Speaker 1: and then another one February thirteenth to February seventeenth. Just
Speaker 1: for a snap shot, temperatures in Dallas Fort Worth plummeted
Speaker 1: to negative two degrees fahrenheit minus nineteen degrees celsius.
Speaker 2: And it is clearly like unprecedented, to be fair, maybe
Speaker 2: is the right word. This is something that's never really
Speaker 2: happened there before, right.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, this was a record that hadn't been broken
Speaker 1: in for seventy two years, at the very least in Dallas.
Speaker 1: But your absolutely rights, unprecedented for all two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty four or so counties in Texas to have winter
Speaker 1: storm warnings. And then things get even worse. Just imagine it.
Speaker 1: Demand for power skyrocketed as people were trying not to
Speaker 1: freeze to death. Supply plummeted because you see, the power
Speaker 1: plants were also affected by the storm, and one by
Speaker 1: one they started going dark when the people needed them
Speaker 1: the most. As a result of this, more than four
Speaker 1: point three million homes and businesses in Texas alone lost
Speaker 1: power for some amount of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and forty seven that we know of people lost
Speaker 2: their lives as a direct result of this absolute catastrophe.
Speaker 3: And the causes of death here range from the actual
Speaker 3: cold itself leading to someone death, to carbon monoxide poisoning
Speaker 3: from people attempting to find creative ways to find heat
Speaker 3: to get heat to their bodies and into the house,
Speaker 3: to drownings to house fires to hypothermia. There were automobile
Speaker 3: accidents related with this whole thing. It's just it's been tough,
Speaker 3: and I think the way you put it as a
Speaker 3: catastrophe is it's almost a too light of a word,
Speaker 3: but it's a terrible thing that has gone on.
Speaker 2: It's certainly a step up from a disaster because it's
Speaker 2: like literally a perfect storm where so many things went
Speaker 2: wrong at the same time.
Speaker 1: Exactly well put. And this leads us to our question
Speaker 1: what happens when things go wrong? How did we get here,
Speaker 1: and perhaps most importantly, what happens next. We'll dive into
Speaker 1: this after a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 4: Here's where it gets.
Speaker 1: Crazy, corruption conspiracy. Since Texas did not have federal oversight,
Speaker 1: the various people that would be described as stakeholders in
Speaker 1: this energy game were not mandated to do things that
Speaker 1: other organizations and other states do have to do. They
Speaker 1: didn't institute certain safety measures like winterizing equipment and facilities.
Speaker 1: Winterrizing is being thrown around like a buzzword, but it
Speaker 1: just means weather proofing, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: it just means let's get maybe insulator material around various
Speaker 1: equipment and components and structures.
Speaker 2: On a smaller scale, it reminds me a lot of
Speaker 2: what happened here in Atlanta several years ago with the
Speaker 2: snow Pockellipse. On a much smaller scale, this was more
Speaker 2: a situation of massive inconvenience. I believe a few people
Speaker 2: maybe died in traffic situations like cars sliding off the
Speaker 2: roads and all that, but it was just they just
Speaker 2: weren't prepared, you know, for that level of icing of roads.
Speaker 2: And this is that but on a completely fundamental level
Speaker 2: that affects so many things. Because again that word interconnectedness,
Speaker 2: and we're.
Speaker 3: Going to get to a lot of that. But one
Speaker 3: of the reasons that it is not quite the same,
Speaker 3: but it is applicable here. The situation in Atlanta during
Speaker 3: snow apocalypse is that Atlanta as a city learned from
Speaker 3: what occurred. And I don't know if you guys remember,
Speaker 3: but we've had some pretty intense snow since that time,
Speaker 3: and there is now an infrastructure built up around it,
Speaker 3: and the infrastructure has been improved to the extent where
Speaker 3: the highways at least are not going to be a
Speaker 3: place where a ton of motorists get caught up for
Speaker 3: a couple of days.
Speaker 2: I have anything. They overprep now or they like overreact,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'll I'll know if that will last, because we
Speaker 1: have to we have to be very conscious folks, and
Speaker 1: it's our city, so I think it's fine for us
Speaker 1: to dunk on it. We live in a where part
Speaker 1: of the interstate will just sort of drop out of
Speaker 1: the sky. Like remember one time a bridge on eighty
Speaker 1: five just like part of it just wasn't there, and
Speaker 1: we got a really sketchy story about people starting a
Speaker 1: fire a bridge, which is like an episode of Always Sunny.
Speaker 2: They also blamed it on like the homeless population, smoking
Speaker 2: math or something that ended up being a complete fabrication
Speaker 2: or at the very least a real reach.
Speaker 3: I am not I'm not speaking to this nonsense of
Speaker 3: which you are speaking. This is nonsense, and I agree
Speaker 3: all that stuff ridiculous. Watch my video on YouTube, which
Speaker 3: you can still find, I think on our YouTube channel
Speaker 3: of the of the burning of a highway in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: But what I mean is a very specific thing occurred
Speaker 3: that was a major problem. And let's be honest here
Speaker 3: a pr issue for sure for the city, and steps
Speaker 3: were taken.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, but then we also have to consider again
Speaker 1: It's like the argument I set up at the very
Speaker 1: very top. People, there's a great quote in literature. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was Chekhov, soone check me on this, check me
Speaker 1: on my checkof I can't remember which authors said it,
Speaker 1: but they said, like the mark of a good story
Speaker 1: and a good writer is when the author becomes invisible.
Speaker 1: That's the mark of good infrastructure as well. I know
Speaker 1: this might be maybe unpopular, something people don't want to
Speaker 1: hear right now, But if we look at this situation
Speaker 1: from the perspective of the companies, the various people at
Speaker 1: every point in the energy flow of Texas in that business,
Speaker 1: we can understand their logic. They're in a tremendously competitive,
Speaker 1: even cutthroat market, so why bother preparing for blizzards when
Speaker 1: subfreezing temperatures are so infrequent? Like from their perspective, Just
Speaker 1: for comparison, imagine you live in Miami, why would you
Speaker 1: invest in a pair why would you invest in this
Speaker 1: set of tire chains. They're probably never going to leave
Speaker 1: your garage because you'll probably never need to drive in
Speaker 1: the snow. And that's of course the same logic with Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and it's three snowplows. And there were even people, you know.
Speaker 3: Real.
Speaker 1: Thrift talks, very fiscally conservative people who are saying, why
Speaker 1: are we even wasting money on this? This is these
Speaker 1: snowplows are unnecessary. It's wasteful government spending. And then it
Speaker 1: turned out that even that spending wasn't enough. But we'll
Speaker 1: see how these words taste if we have to eat
Speaker 1: them in another snow apocalypse in Atlanta. But as Michael
Speaker 1: Weber pointed out, he is an energy resource as professor
Speaker 1: at the University of Texas at Austin, their plans were
Speaker 1: flawed because their plans were based on precedent. As we
Speaker 1: said earlier, the storm is unprecedented. They were using outdated
Speaker 1: weather patterns. And if you use those outdated weather patterns,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying there was something that are available to
Speaker 1: them at the time. Maybe future modeling, which is predictive
Speaker 1: but can have a wild margin error if you're using
Speaker 1: that outdated weather as as your roadmap. Then of course
Speaker 1: you're going to say things don't freeze, you know it
Speaker 1: just it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Well, they also didn't learn from past occurrences where this
Speaker 3: very thing has happened in the not like not that
Speaker 3: long ago, right, would that we mentioned in our our
Speaker 3: episode that we already that we've like mentioned this in before.
Speaker 3: We talked about how it's happened several times in the
Speaker 3: past where this very thing occurred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're absolutely right, and this it's important to understand
Speaker 1: that perspective because also picture yourself like you're the you're
Speaker 1: the movement shaker, the CEO of some company in the
Speaker 1: energy industry in Texas, and your business starts failing because
Speaker 1: you invested so much in winterrization, and people are coming
Speaker 1: to you and saying, why did we waste a million
Speaker 1: and millions of dollars on this? We have to spend
Speaker 1: that money fighting for our lives as a business, because
Speaker 1: there are other hungry people out there. They want to
Speaker 1: eat our electric lunch.
Speaker 2: Is this a byproduct of the complete isolation of their
Speaker 2: power system, having no subsidization or no assistance from Uncle Samuel?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is this is something that comes out of
Speaker 1: the deregulation for sure. And at this point I suggest
Speaker 1: that we we pause for a moment, not for a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsors, but for a word from some
Speaker 1: of our fellow listeners who are in Texas and who
Speaker 1: have written to us, and some of our own personal experience,
Speaker 1: which we don't always do, but we, like millions and
Speaker 1: millions of other people, do, have friends and family in Texas. Matt,
Speaker 1: you just spoke with your uncle not too long ago, correct,
Speaker 1: How's he doing?
Speaker 3: I guess it was a little while ago. It was
Speaker 3: least third day as we're recording this, when when they
Speaker 3: were still very much in the middle of a power outage.
Speaker 3: He lives in Houston, in a suburb just to I
Speaker 3: want to say, the southwest of Houston, and he said
Speaker 3: the power at that time had been out for two days.
Speaker 3: Then it came on for about five hours, then it
Speaker 3: went out again. Thankfully, he and then the family were
Speaker 3: able to store some food outside because it was cold
Speaker 3: enough to preserve food for an elongated amount of time
Speaker 3: at that time. And another great thing, and this is
Speaker 3: a reason to have a fully gas stove setup. He
Speaker 3: didn't need power in order to start that gas stove.
Speaker 3: You just turn the knob and then get a source
Speaker 3: of fire like a lighter or anything else or a match,
Speaker 3: put it over there, and you can cook anything you
Speaker 3: need to. So that was very very good. The big problem,
Speaker 3: he said, was the water and gaining access to water
Speaker 3: during all of this.
Speaker 2: Stuff, because if bust burst bypes are just frozen.
Speaker 1: They're a couple factors. Partially burst pipes because of the freeze, right,
Speaker 1: and water expands when it freezes, and then partially because
Speaker 1: the water treatment plants also had gone offline and that
Speaker 1: can lower That can result in lower water pressure those
Speaker 1: two factors, and at a certain threshold of water pressure,
Speaker 1: when it goes below a certain threshold, people will be
Speaker 1: advised to boil water. But then how do you boil water?
Speaker 1: If you don't have electricity, right, You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: build a fire. You're gonna have to be like Matt's
Speaker 1: uncle and have a gas stove or something like that.
Speaker 3: Well, and also remember if you don't have a way
Speaker 3: to heat the water, then imagine what it's like to
Speaker 3: try attempt to bathe or attempt to do anything that
Speaker 3: would require warmer water that is not you know, you're
Speaker 3: not going to boil then I guess, mix with some
Speaker 3: cold water and pour on yourself. It becomes a big issue.
Speaker 3: Just dealt with this when our water went out.
Speaker 2: Speaking of burst pipes and just first hand accounts, John
Speaker 2: Oliver did a really great segment on this and then
Speaker 2: showed some really shocking images of this stuff, these scenes
Speaker 2: in people's homes and businesses, and one of them was
Speaker 2: a ceiling fan literally dripping with these like stalag what
Speaker 2: is it, stalag tights that go down these you know,
Speaker 2: ice crystals coming down off of the ceiling fan blades,
Speaker 2: which could only have been because of burst pipes and
Speaker 2: water leaking through the ceiling, right, Yeah. And then another
Speaker 2: one of a car wash where like the you know,
Speaker 2: the cool foamy stuff that's colorful when you go through
Speaker 2: and everyone makes the Instagram videos of it going down
Speaker 2: their windshield. Well, one of those tanks, I guess burst
Speaker 2: and that stuff exploded out and it's frozen and it
Speaker 2: looks like literally like some kind of magical cave you know,
Speaker 2: in fairy land or something, but way more terrifying and
Speaker 2: the sinister.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you kind of also see heartbreaking
Speaker 1: accounts of people burning whatever was flammable in their house,
Speaker 1: like furniture and so on, to keep their kids warm,
Speaker 1: people sleeping in cars or charging their phones off their
Speaker 1: car battery, trying to find where water is in any
Speaker 1: emergency situation. By the way, once you have found some
Speaker 1: modicum of physical safety, your very next thing, no matter what,
Speaker 1: your very next thing, is to figure out where you
Speaker 1: are going to find potable water. You would be surprised
Speaker 1: how long people can survive without eating and without having
Speaker 1: permanent damage to their system from doing so. But dehydration
Speaker 1: will rock your shit and you can die within four days,
Speaker 1: you know, And this your mileage may vary. There are people,
Speaker 1: of course, we've all seen survival stories of people who
Speaker 1: managed to stay alive, but they didn't thrive past that point.
Speaker 1: And you are very much on a ticking clock. The
Speaker 1: moment you realize you can't find water, please take it seriously,
Speaker 1: even if you think you know, even if you think
Speaker 1: I'm just camping somewhere and there's a clearly marked trail
Speaker 1: and I can walk half a mile to the parking lot,
Speaker 1: Just take some water with you, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And one last thing to add here. My uncle lives
Speaker 3: in a very nice area. And on our previous episode
Speaker 3: where we were talking about this situation, it was mentioned
Speaker 3: at least rumors that power was being sent to very
Speaker 3: wealthy communities before it was going to be sent to
Speaker 3: anywhere else, or like diverted well where there was an
Speaker 3: inequality in power distribution depending on essentially a zip code
Speaker 3: or a neighborhood or something like that. I can't speak
Speaker 3: to all of those, but I can tell you I've
Speaker 3: been to my family's house.
Speaker 5: It is lovely.
Speaker 3: It's in a ridiculously nice area, and they still lost
Speaker 3: power just as frequently as everybody else.
Speaker 2: Sure, I don't know exactly where Senator Ted Cruz lives,
Speaker 2: but his house apparently got cold enough that they decided
Speaker 2: to piss off to what is it Ken Kuhn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll look into that a little bit later
Speaker 1: in the episode two. Before we move on, I want
Speaker 1: to thank Miles B.
Speaker 2: Nathan G.
Speaker 1: Jacob D and a number of other people who reached
Speaker 1: out to us to give us their experience during this
Speaker 1: massive catastrophe. Jacob especially noted something that one of my
Speaker 1: relatives in Austin noted, which is that people's odds of
Speaker 1: having power did seem to be better if they were
Speaker 1: if they were around something like emergency responder building or
Speaker 1: a hospital something like that. Jacob You also noted that
Speaker 1: the story from Urkat kept changing as far as as
Speaker 1: when power would be restored, how rolling blackouts would work,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 3: And also said Encore was giving updates like, oh, power
Speaker 3: is going to be on in fifteen minutes, Oh, your
Speaker 3: power's on.
Speaker 5: Not power was not on.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And there's kind of a fog of war
Speaker 1: with this too. You know, there are so many moving parts.
Speaker 1: But here's what happened when the power outages began. Natural
Speaker 1: gas plants, utility scale wind turbines, coal and nuclear plants,
Speaker 1: all of those started to trip, meaning, you know, they
Speaker 1: fell off the grid because they didn't have the investments
Speaker 1: necessary to keep them online during sustained low temperatures. They
Speaker 1: just couldn't function this way. Even if there wasn't a
Speaker 1: surge in demand for power like that. That's an important note.
Speaker 1: Even if it had just been the storm and there
Speaker 1: had not been an increase in demand for energy, a
Speaker 1: lot of these facilities still would have failed just because
Speaker 1: they could handle. That's why URKOT but that's their logic
Speaker 1: for ordering utilities to institute rolling blackouts, which are probably
Speaker 1: familiar to in Ron fans in California, if there are
Speaker 1: any in Ron fans left after their massive debacle.
Speaker 3: And this is a big note that Ben mentioned here.
Speaker 3: I just want to make sure we're not going to
Speaker 3: go over it too quickly. These were all sorts of
Speaker 3: different types of energy generating plants. No matter what you're
Speaker 3: reading online or what anybody is saying, this is affecting
Speaker 3: all parts of It's not just the green sector. It's
Speaker 3: not just coal or you know, natural.
Speaker 5: Gas or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's everything across the board was being affected.
Speaker 1: So the logic here is theoretically sound. Urkott says, Look,
Speaker 1: we have to we have to kind of cut off
Speaker 1: an arm to save the body temporarily, right, We're going
Speaker 1: to strategically reduce temporary demand through a somewhat arcane process
Speaker 1: that is very vulnerable to corruption or maybe some phone
Speaker 1: calls from powerful people asking for little favors. Anyway, they
Speaker 1: said by reducing demand at certain times in certain areas,
Speaker 1: they would be able to prevent the entire circus tent
Speaker 1: of Texas electricity from collapsing. And that's a rock and
Speaker 1: a hard place. Honestly, if the entire grid failed, then
Speaker 1: Texans would have been out without power for weeks, even months,
Speaker 1: and it could have affected all the other pieces of
Speaker 1: infrastructure right including water treatment.
Speaker 4: But that's a.
Speaker 1: Hard thing to square when you are in the midst
Speaker 1: of a rolling outage that was supposed to last for
Speaker 1: like a couple of hours, and it lasted days at
Speaker 1: a time, and that happened to millions of people. We're
Speaker 1: going to pause for a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to dive into the unpleasant story of
Speaker 1: people who did keep their power for at least part
Speaker 1: of the time. Doesn't in the way you suspect. We're back, Okay,
Speaker 1: So imagine you are one of the lucky few, through accident, fate,
Speaker 1: or design, managed to keep your power for some or
Speaker 1: all of the winter outages. You're not in a super
Speaker 1: great place because the people who did have power found
Speaker 1: that their bills skyrocketed. Skyrocketed is not the right word.
Speaker 1: Your bills launched into orbit. They space rocketed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know it follows the concept of supply
Speaker 2: and demand, but you don't typically think of that in
Speaker 2: terms of like things that people need to survive, as
Speaker 2: that being a calculus.
Speaker 1: And yet here we are there's a little bit inside
Speaker 1: baseball here.
Speaker 2: But here's what happened.
Speaker 1: One megawatt of what's called wholesale power went from fifty
Speaker 1: bucks to nine thousand dollars. A wholesale power is something
Speaker 1: that a business will buy and then they will sell
Speaker 1: it or provide it to consumers. So this wouldn't affect you.
Speaker 1: If you add what's called a fixed rate plan, that's
Speaker 1: a very common thing here in the US, you're basically,
Speaker 1: as a customer, forced to gamble with a power company,
Speaker 1: and you can make one of a couple of You
Speaker 1: can make a couple of types of bets. One of
Speaker 1: the bets is saying, hey, I will pay this much
Speaker 1: per unit of power all the time, and I'll do
Speaker 1: that for twelve months. So if there's a surgeon price
Speaker 1: or demand, I won't have to pay more than my
Speaker 1: you know, thirty cents or buck thirty five or whatever.
Speaker 1: But if the price goes lower than that dollar thirty five,
Speaker 1: I still have to pay the dollar thirty five. So
Speaker 1: you're kind of in a casino with a power company.
Speaker 2: I always wondered, I mean, I guess it really is
Speaker 2: up to the individual, But do you see a bet? Obviously,
Speaker 2: the benefit here was alarming apparent, But in general, what
Speaker 2: would you recommend, Ben.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you.
Speaker 5: Look, I'll give you my opinion.
Speaker 3: I've been I've been officially paying for power now since
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, so I've been paying a separate
Speaker 3: power bill since two thousand and four. I have attempted
Speaker 3: a variable style once, and it's the only time I
Speaker 3: had to pay ridiculous amounts of money for power, and
Speaker 3: did the same thing with heating bills only once you
Speaker 3: got me once, never will do it again.
Speaker 2: I've always felt that fixed rate seemed like the safest bet,
Speaker 2: and I'm a fixed rate man myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. Again, these are our personal experiences. Your mileage
Speaker 1: may vary. But there are power monopolies here in Georgia,
Speaker 1: so you have so you are forced to deal with them,
Speaker 1: and they want you to gamble. And I personally am
Speaker 1: not a big fan of gambling, and I do think
Speaker 1: you know, you could say I'd be hyperbolic or whatever
Speaker 1: by discription vibing it is this, but it is. It
Speaker 1: is gambling, and I had an experience like you met.
Speaker 1: Variable can work if you like astute lee time it
Speaker 1: and you pay attention, pay close attention. Fixed rate it's
Speaker 1: kind of like you're just paying more for the certitude
Speaker 1: and the predictability. So fixed rate is pretty good. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people in Texas were on
Speaker 1: fixed rate too, So let's talk about the people who
Speaker 1: were with a variable rate. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: smallest place all of us listening today have ever lived
Speaker 1: in is, But there was one woman in Texas who
Speaker 1: had a seven hundred square foot apartment, pretty small. She
Speaker 1: was keeping it at sixty degrees. She didn't lose power
Speaker 1: for very long. When she got her power bill, it
Speaker 1: was one thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Okay, is this like by design? Are they really thinking
Speaker 2: people are went to pay this? Are they really gonna
Speaker 2: hold people to these absurd bills?
Speaker 1: Is it supply and demand or is it price gouging?
Speaker 2: It's or is it an accident?
Speaker 4: Think?
Speaker 5: I just I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, the bill is not an accident. That's how much
Speaker 3: the energy cost when they were attempting when they're going
Speaker 3: through this crisis. If energy was being supplied to your home,
Speaker 3: the supply and demand, baby, it's messed up. It's really
Speaker 3: messed up. We can get into that a little more
Speaker 3: as we get to the conclusion here, but yeah, the
Speaker 3: big thing is that a lot of people dealt with
Speaker 3: something like that huge in the thousands bills that were coming.
Speaker 1: Due, and ultimately, as we'll see, this will have to
Speaker 1: be decided in the courts. I think one guy was
Speaker 1: talking to NBC News and he said, I have a
Speaker 1: two bedroom home. My power bill is usually one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five to one hundred and fifty bucks, but
Speaker 1: this month it's more than three thousand dollars, which caught
Speaker 1: me by I am editorialized in a little Another family,
Speaker 1: one really extreme example. Another family told the same team
Speaker 1: at NBC that they were able to keep the power
Speaker 1: in their home, which had three bedrooms, and then they
Speaker 1: found their bill ended up being ten thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: the price gougeon didn't stop there, didn't stop with power
Speaker 1: bills because remember, this is a crisis.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, and I get that, and I understand that
Speaker 2: this is a crisis for the energy end of it too,
Speaker 2: the provider, but again it's kind of their fault, so
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem fair that they would pass this on
Speaker 2: to the consumer, but I guess that's what utilities do.
Speaker 2: But would they have been notified, would they have just
Speaker 2: known this was happening from maybe the news, Like I
Speaker 2: just I just feel it would have been in the
Speaker 2: responsibility of the energy coming to say, hey, head's up,
Speaker 2: this is about to get real expensive.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it's tough. And also we have to remember
Speaker 1: it was happening so quickly, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: peopoz zero PREPTI. But as we record today, Texas officials
Speaker 1: are cracking down on businesses that have been accused of
Speaker 1: hiking the prices of food and water and hotel rooms,
Speaker 1: especially while the state is still battling through the shortages
Speaker 1: that were caused by these storms.
Speaker 2: Like people were going.
Speaker 1: To hotels, not even nice hotels, they were finding that
Speaker 1: the price had been hiked up to nine hundred bucks
Speaker 1: because folks would pay it. There was something I found
Speaker 1: especially wholesome in a very dystopian way. There was a store,
Speaker 1: like a you know, like a little grocery store that
Speaker 1: or a gas station that had closed down because of
Speaker 1: the storm and because they didn't have power, and some
Speaker 1: locals have been like breaking into this place to get water.
Speaker 1: But then they started paying on an honor system. And
Speaker 1: so there's like this pile of cash on the floor
Speaker 1: and a nice little like a nice note, which I
Speaker 1: thought was a really I thought that was a really
Speaker 1: human thing, which I mean is a compliment. But back
Speaker 1: to the water, more than twelve million people found their
Speaker 1: water service disrupted. More than two hundred thousand people in
Speaker 1: Texas live in areas where water systems were completely non operational.
Speaker 1: We've got, especially in rural Texas, we've got a lot
Speaker 1: of people who have wells, and generally I think that
Speaker 1: is an awesome idea. But we had some folks contact
Speaker 1: us and say, you know, we thought we'd be okay,
Speaker 1: but our wells, our wells were frozen, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And we're not on the grid.
Speaker 4: So what can we do?
Speaker 2: Can't access that water if it's all locked up in
Speaker 2: ice well.
Speaker 3: There's an additional thing there with like depending on where
Speaker 3: that water is coming from in that well, where it's
Speaker 3: you know, where it's dug into. Just imagine all the
Speaker 3: chemicals and stuff that are going into land across parts
Speaker 3: of Texas. Yikes, because of what fracking mostly.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's right, that's a good point that because the
Speaker 1: fracking is still in the chat very much.
Speaker 2: Fract chat, the fract chat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hold on what and this is where we get
Speaker 1: to some much needed levity.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 1: Something happened in the ensuing information war or narrative war
Speaker 1: that would be hilarious if it was not so so
Speaker 1: very dumb. While people were dying, several pundits and politicians
Speaker 1: in the beginning of this crisis tried to blame the
Speaker 1: power failures on renewable energy, specifically windmills. That's right, they
Speaker 1: are the villain of this story, big wind, which sounds like,
Speaker 1: you know, a street name for someone who.
Speaker 2: Is flatgel it.
Speaker 1: But this, this is really easy to disprove. I know,
Speaker 1: we all saw the clips, but honestly, folks, maybe twenty
Speaker 1: three percent of Texas's energy comes from renewable sources, like
Speaker 1: all of them together.
Speaker 2: It sounds a whole lot like a pay no attention
Speaker 2: to the man behind the curtain scenario, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, like look over here, misdirection. And also it's
Speaker 2: obviously an agenda as well, because as we discussed, I mean,
Speaker 2: Texas as a history of fossil fuels and fossil fuel extraction,
Speaker 2: so they're best in it and they don't want to
Speaker 2: be told what to do by big government, you know,
Speaker 2: and something like this, this creepy green new Deal.
Speaker 1: Right, exactly exactly. And you know, natural gas powers most
Speaker 1: of that grid if you looked at the statistical breakdown.
Speaker 1: So really, natural gas is the first thing you should
Speaker 1: be looking at in these power related emergencies. And production
Speaker 1: of natural gas had plummeted due to the freezing conditions, right,
Speaker 1: which made it difficult for power plants to get the
Speaker 1: fuel necessary to generate electricity. So you can have a
Speaker 1: working car, but if you don't have the gas, you're
Speaker 1: not going anywhere. That's what happened to a lot of
Speaker 1: these plants. They don't store a bunch of fuel on site,
Speaker 1: has to be brought to them continually. But that being said,
Speaker 1: here is a let me know if we should keep
Speaker 1: this in guys. Here here is a hot take from
Speaker 1: Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who is known for his
Speaker 1: somewhat opinionated Facebook post trying very hard to be fair here.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's right. Miller said, we should never build another
Speaker 2: wind turbine in Texas.
Speaker 3: We should never build another wind turbine at Texas.
Speaker 2: Full stop, full stop. I mean, maybe he's just a
Speaker 2: big fan of birds and he's just triggered by wind turbines,
Speaker 2: you know, because of whatever.
Speaker 1: Maybe just scare the windmills.
Speaker 2: Maybe he scare of windmills. Maybe he's a don Quixote
Speaker 2: type figure.
Speaker 1: And then he had another Facebook post where he said
Speaker 1: insult added to injury. Those ugly wind turbines out there
Speaker 1: are among the main reasons we are experiencing electricity blackouts.
Speaker 1: Isn't that ironic?
Speaker 2: Don't you think that's an a worse set reference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, he continues, he goes so much for the
Speaker 1: unsightly and unproductive energy robbing Obama monuments. At least they
Speaker 1: show us where idiots live.
Speaker 2: Oh, min you know who he sounds like? I can
Speaker 2: you think? I think you know who he sounds like?
Speaker 2: Just Trump. Yeah, it's a familiar tone that we haven't
Speaker 2: been hearing as much of lately. Uh, just in terms
Speaker 2: of that just out and out you know, name calling
Speaker 2: and hyperbole. Uh yeah, Obama monuments. He should just call
Speaker 2: it gone the next extra mount and call them obamuments.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I do like that.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I objectively like the cadence. Uh there's
Speaker 1: something about those three m's, how they kind of ride
Speaker 1: the beat in that in that phrase monument. You're right,
Speaker 1: you're right, But I agree with you that as a portmanteau.
Speaker 1: Oh what wassents, Yeah, there is uh, there's there's something
Speaker 1: else here. We received some correspondents from a lot of
Speaker 1: our fellow listeners, including our main man, James, who was
Speaker 1: who told us that there appears to be some corruption
Speaker 1: regarding who was able to keep power. It appears that
Speaker 1: some wealthy residents or people residing in wealthy zip codes
Speaker 1: got preferential treatment. We do know that Urkat and the
Speaker 1: utilities were able to direct these blackouts right to a
Speaker 1: degree because they prioritize things like keeping the power on
Speaker 1: at the fire station, or the power on at the
Speaker 1: hospital or the precinct, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 1: those are normal things to do during a disaster. The
Speaker 1: question is, did, for instance, someone who like, let's say
Speaker 1: you're a high up person in like industry or local politics,
Speaker 1: are you able to then call the person running things
Speaker 1: at your local utility and say, hey, the power and
Speaker 1: my zip code stays on and they're like, you gotta
Speaker 1: just remember me at the next I don't know, Illuminati.
Speaker 2: Cookout, Illumnati cookout, Illuminati.
Speaker 1: Cookout, and for the next the next Bohemian propane grove.
Speaker 1: I love it okay, So so that now we're looking
Speaker 1: at the aftermath and this is still happening. By the way,
Speaker 1: where this is this should just be considered a kind
Speaker 1: of one oh one explainer of the opportunities for corruption
Speaker 1: and conspiracy. The situation and the weather are improving, but
Speaker 1: still tons and tons of people don't have power and
Speaker 1: don't have clean water.
Speaker 3: No. By the way, I just got my friend Vanessa,
Speaker 3: who lives out I think near in the Fort Worth area,
Speaker 3: just called me back and left a voicemail. But I
Speaker 3: don't have access to that. I may get a text
Speaker 3: in a moment, just to give an update on the ground.
Speaker 3: So we'll do that before this episode ends, if we can.
Speaker 1: And there is hope on the horizon, folks, we didn't
Speaker 1: want this to end with a total gloom and doom.
Speaker 1: Senator Ted Cruz, who was witnessed abandoning his state during
Speaker 1: the ongoing disaster for an aboardive trip to Cancum, officially
Speaker 1: returned when the press caught the story.
Speaker 2: Nah, he was always coming back. He was always coming
Speaker 2: right back. He just had to go to be a
Speaker 2: dad for a day, to make sure you get the
Speaker 2: kids all settled in to the was it the four seasons,
Speaker 2: I believe, and then he was always going to come
Speaker 2: right back, you know, with a giant rolling suitcase. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm being snarky. I just say, yeah, people only do
Speaker 2: stuff they're supposed to do when they get caught. And
Speaker 2: I don't know how he thought he would get away
Speaker 2: with this money.
Speaker 3: Money, As we've said numerous times and Ben, this is
Speaker 3: a mantra that we have on this show. Money is
Speaker 3: a superpower. It's the close thing you're gonna get to
Speaker 3: it Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz has some money. He was like,
Speaker 3: uh what is this?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 5: Nah?
Speaker 3: And he got out of there. Look, I know it's
Speaker 3: not a good political look and I know it's.
Speaker 5: Terrible and loud. People are very very mad.
Speaker 3: At him, but like, can you really blame him? He
Speaker 3: has the superpower to be able to go to can
Speaker 3: Kun when stuff goes bad.
Speaker 1: So this is the thing, regardless value feel about the guy.
Speaker 1: He caught a lot of bad press, and rightly so,
Speaker 1: because he kept changing his explanation for the trip. He
Speaker 1: kept changing his description of the trip.
Speaker 2: And he's really bad at it too. He's really bad
Speaker 2: at like lying in this way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not saying I think he's a great guy
Speaker 3: walking back a little bit. But it's like the you guys,
Speaker 3: if you guys don't listen, if any of you out
Speaker 3: there doesn't does not listen to the show, this is
Speaker 3: important on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5: You should.
Speaker 3: They've got a segment with take what is it? Takebacks
Speaker 3: apology things like that, this is my take back.
Speaker 5: Sorry.
Speaker 3: What I would say is watch SNL that just came
Speaker 3: out this past week. There's a great cold open that
Speaker 3: is describing what you guys are saying.
Speaker 1: Here right with the corn Rose Yeah, and this so
Speaker 1: you know, the cavalry returns. He got dunked on in
Speaker 1: the media because he was changing the explanation description of
Speaker 1: the story. Other facts came out. There were some leaked
Speaker 1: text messages. People who loved dogs were mad that they
Speaker 1: left their dog for what was sometimes described as a
Speaker 1: forward ay trip or like the length of time kept varying,
Speaker 1: but don't worry. After he changed his explanation several times,
Speaker 1: Senator Cruz is now currently on the ground and he's
Speaker 1: made sure to be photographed handed out water bottles. So truly,
Speaker 1: it is the trying times that bring out the hero
Speaker 1: and all of us.
Speaker 2: I basically think the man's a saint at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's the thing though, by location
Speaker 1: is a saint superpower, right, it's one of the miracles.
Speaker 1: So he may still be in.
Speaker 2: Cancun, wouldn't that be cool? Or maybe he has a clone. Anyway,
Speaker 2: he could have handled the pr you know, fall out
Speaker 2: a little better if he did have a clone or
Speaker 2: a better disguise or something. You know, even with the
Speaker 2: mask he stuck out like a sore thumb in the airport.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get a get a even a really lazy idea
Speaker 1: like travel is said truths or something like that. But
Speaker 1: but now I mean that that aside. We know there
Speaker 1: are ramifications brewing for everybody here. For the businesses like
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz was getting tried in the court of public opinion,
Speaker 1: but some of these energy providers are going to you know,
Speaker 1: actual court.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like we said at the beginning, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's a it's a when when these things start
Speaker 2: to break, it just becomes a series of fingers pointing.
Speaker 2: And when a finger points at you, you point your finger.
Speaker 2: It's some one else, and then that finger points it
Speaker 2: somewhere someone else, and then it's up to the courts
Speaker 2: to decide who deserves the finger.
Speaker 4: That's why I point with my whole hand.
Speaker 2: M hmm.
Speaker 1: Never never just one finger.
Speaker 5: Give him the whole hand.
Speaker 1: Give what's I think presidents have to do? You have
Speaker 1: to kind of like point with your thumb when you
Speaker 1: talk so you don't look like a dictator. Someone got
Speaker 1: paid to figure that out.
Speaker 5: He figured out.
Speaker 1: He was the first one. Someone told him to do that.
Speaker 1: But right now as we speak, there is a class
Speaker 1: action lawsuit in the works for a Texas electric retailer
Speaker 1: named Gritty. They're getting sued for one billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Wait, Gritty like the mascot of Michigan Philadelphia, No two d's.
Speaker 2: It's a cute sounding name, though, I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: True, it feels like an app that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And for sure, that's not the only lawsuit that's
Speaker 3: coming out. There's there are going to be so many
Speaker 3: happening the next couple of years here because.
Speaker 5: Of the situation.
Speaker 3: And we also know that erkat that Energy Reliability Council,
Speaker 3: that's not the folks who are in.
Speaker 5: Charge of that thing are not getting away scott free either.
Speaker 2: It's been a cascade of resignations.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, that's correct. At least as of right now.
Speaker 3: I believe it's six people who are leaving.
Speaker 2: That's a minor cascade.
Speaker 3: I'd say, yeah, yeah, it was I know five initially
Speaker 3: five members of the board. They all tendered their resignation,
Speaker 3: four of them I think, in one message and then
Speaker 3: another one separately, and including that, I believe that's the
Speaker 3: head of the board, right, the chair, the board chair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, left, yeah, yeah. People, These resignations are all from
Speaker 1: the Board of directors. But the headline might be a
Speaker 1: little bit misleading in this one because in the joint
Speaker 1: resignation letter that I think four of these people wrote,
Speaker 1: they said that they were motivated to resign because people
Speaker 1: had objected to the fact that these four people did
Speaker 1: not themselves reside in Texas. So they said, I like
Speaker 1: the way you would put it off air, Matt. They
Speaker 1: basically threw their hands up, and we're like, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, you guys deal with this. Oh that's cool.
Speaker 3: We'll get out here.
Speaker 1: Buck Pass officially.
Speaker 2: Break forever.
Speaker 1: So we are we are, you know, we are trying
Speaker 1: to handle this with levity. But it is it is
Speaker 1: true that regardless of you feel about the role of government,
Speaker 1: the role of private industry, or how you feel about
Speaker 1: the weather. These three things all played a role in
Speaker 1: what whether through their absence or whether through their strategies,
Speaker 1: they all played a role in this, in this terrifying
Speaker 1: series of events. You in these situations, everybody wants someone
Speaker 1: to blame, like we said at the very top of
Speaker 1: the episode, but really you can't blame a utilities commission
Speaker 1: for not being able to control the weather, right, That's
Speaker 1: just something we all have to deal with. And then
Speaker 1: when you think about winter rizing, if you dig down
Speaker 1: into the boring stuff about winterrization, you'll see that no
Speaker 1: small number of experts are saying at this point it
Speaker 1: might be better to build out new infrastructure that's already
Speaker 1: created to be weather proof then spending the money trying
Speaker 1: to winterize the existing stuff.
Speaker 2: I think the issue that I have with that idea
Speaker 2: of you can't blame them is the political stance of
Speaker 2: so many people in power in a state like that
Speaker 2: involves climate change denial. And this is an absolute, in
Speaker 2: my opinion, example of the climate changing. So all these
Speaker 2: climate deniers that are like you know, baring their head
Speaker 2: in the sand, saying nothing to see here, Nothing's going
Speaker 2: to happen then stuff like this happens and they weren't
Speaker 2: prepared because they denied it.
Speaker 1: I think that's you know, I think that is a
Speaker 1: good point. I think it's a valid point. And also,
Speaker 1: the weather is becoming increasingly unpredictable. If you are lucky
Speaker 1: enough to have elderly people in your life, family or friends, right,
Speaker 1: and when you say elderly sit, I'm thinking like seventy plus.
Speaker 1: If you have people like that in your life and
Speaker 1: you have some time, ask them how the weather was
Speaker 1: when they were growing up, you're going to if they
Speaker 1: haven't already told you. I know there's a stereotype that
Speaker 1: older people like to talk about weather. But if they
Speaker 1: haven't already told you, I guarantee that you will see
Speaker 1: from firsthand experience that there has been a noticeable change
Speaker 1: of weather over those seven decades those people were alive,
Speaker 1: and that makes the problem even tougher. That's the question
Speaker 1: we have to end on a question how can we
Speaker 1: prepare for things that we can't predict? Can we afford
Speaker 1: to prepare for everything, no matter how unlikely it may seem?
Speaker 2: Should we? Should we even do that?
Speaker 1: You know, like like Matt, you we have this thing
Speaker 1: where we put in related episodes while we're working on
Speaker 1: the show, and Matt, you cited a really great one
Speaker 1: that I didn't necessarily think about immediately, which was our
Speaker 1: question about whether a solar flare can destroy civilization. The
Speaker 1: answer is yes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because the whole point I almost brought it
Speaker 3: up earlier. We were talking about how long the power
Speaker 3: was out and how long it could have been out right,
Speaker 3: and if it was out for weeks, then you're dealing
Speaker 3: with potentially the collapse of civilization in Texas.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what that episode was about, because when you're out,
Speaker 3: when power cannot be turned on for a certain amount
Speaker 3: of time right now because of all of the infrastructure
Speaker 3: and how everything functions, if it was off for long enough,
Speaker 3: I don't have any headphones anymore. If it was long
Speaker 3: enough for if it was out for long enough, it's
Speaker 3: absolute chaos. My son really wants me to tell you
Speaker 3: guys about chaos and how exciting it is.
Speaker 2: Is he a proponent of chaos theory?
Speaker 5: Oh, he's trying to get me to open a Bark's
Speaker 5: root beer.
Speaker 2: Oh got it. I mean, look, we can see what
Speaker 2: you're talking about in Thatt just by the series of
Speaker 2: events in this story that happened over the span of
Speaker 2: like several days, you know, I mean it really triggered
Speaker 2: an absolute domino effect of things going horribly horribly wrong.
Speaker 2: So you know, given a longer period of time, with
Speaker 2: the right conditions, it absolutely would lead to the collapse
Speaker 2: of civilization if things were you know, just wrong enough.
Speaker 1: But then on the other hand, you know, it's still
Speaker 1: kind of a gamble argue will believe because we take
Speaker 1: the solar flare example. I'm just using that because it's
Speaker 1: like an apocalyptic movie plot. In the solar flare example,
Speaker 1: if you take the steps to harden an electric grid
Speaker 1: right against this unpredictable event, then what happened, Like what
Speaker 1: if one doesn't come for fifty years, then you just
Speaker 1: look like you're incredibly paranoid. There's that other But there's
Speaker 1: this other example. We talked a little bit about off air.
Speaker 1: Back when the modern London sewer system was being built.
Speaker 1: The guy who was heading it up said, look, we're
Speaker 1: only going to do this once. I've got all the estimates,
Speaker 1: everything that is reasonable, but.
Speaker 2: We're gonna go way bigger.
Speaker 1: We're going to make these pipes like twice as big
Speaker 1: as they need to be because if we don't, this
Speaker 1: is going to come back to haunt us. And everybody
Speaker 1: was like, you're crazy, dude. I don't know what your
Speaker 1: thing with pipes is, but you need to pump your brakes.
Speaker 1: And it turns out he was right. That's the only
Speaker 1: reason the London sewer system still works is because someone
Speaker 1: had the foresight to think about these future possibilities, and
Speaker 1: they also didn't have a problem with being mocked for them,
Speaker 1: like the guy who talked about washing your hands and
Speaker 1: ended up in a satan asylum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And these are questions for you, folks. We want to hear.
Speaker 1: I want to hear your thoughts. What's the answer here?
Speaker 1: How do we avoid this massive tragedy and tragedies like
Speaker 1: this in the future. Is there stuff we should do?
Speaker 1: Should there is federal regulation? The answer for Texas? You
Speaker 1: know a lot of people are going to say no.
Speaker 1: A lot of people say that this is the point.
Speaker 1: Is better predictive weather models? Do we just tell everybody
Speaker 1: constantly live as those civilization may collapse the next.
Speaker 5: Seventy two hours. That's the one. That's the one.
Speaker 3: Speaking of My friend Vanessa just got back to me
Speaker 3: and it's exactly this. I'm going to read this verbatim
Speaker 3: to you. We are key preppers, so we were prepared,
Speaker 3: but we had zero electricity, not rolling for eighty four hours.
Speaker 3: Eighty four hours, the temperatures in our home got to
Speaker 3: forty degrees. It was in the forties. We were okay,
Speaker 3: but we had supplies. The elderly in our area had
Speaker 3: it very hard, lots of pipes and damage. But it's
Speaker 3: eighty degrees here today. Geoengineering is wacky. So basically, yeah,
Speaker 3: unless you are a prepper essentially, or you see yourself
Speaker 3: as that way and are prepared for this stuff, you
Speaker 3: may not be ready when something like this goes down
Speaker 3: on the individual level of the home level, the apartment level,
Speaker 3: whatever it is. It would be great if the companies
Speaker 3: and these big organizations and the profit centers instead were prepared.
Speaker 1: Right right now, as we continue, doubtlessly more information is
Speaker 1: going to come out about how this catastrophe was handled,
Speaker 1: and that may change everybody's view of the sequence of events.
Speaker 1: That's that's just the nature of how these sorts of
Speaker 1: investigations work. On a side note, you guys, I finally
Speaker 1: did it. I achieved my dream of getting a French mr,
Speaker 1: which is an R C I R. They're just streets ahead.
Speaker 2: Chicken cordon bleur. What are we talking here?
Speaker 1: They got some good stuff? Like they all come with
Speaker 1: a pat. There's one that's like bor pet bo ar.
Speaker 1: They've got some good stuff. I'll send you guys picks
Speaker 1: when they come in.
Speaker 3: But as long as there's something lorange in there that
Speaker 3: we're good.
Speaker 2: I gotta ask you, guys, though, in a year or guys,
Speaker 2: get the year that has already felt like half a year.
Speaker 2: Let's just consider this a continuation of last year, just
Speaker 2: chock full of crazy, historical, unprecedented events. Where do you
Speaker 2: think this one ranks?
Speaker 1: Tough to say, honestly, because if the past several months
Speaker 1: have taught us anything it is that the motto for
Speaker 1: the motto for this year, the motto for last year.
Speaker 1: The moto for last year was it's always something right,
Speaker 1: and the motto for this year may well be but wait,
Speaker 1: there's more. So I'm having a tough time. I think
Speaker 1: it's a great question, and it's one we should send
Speaker 1: to you, our fellow listeners. How would you rank it?
Speaker 1: What else is not getting reported? Because we can assure
Speaker 1: you there's a lot and also how would somebody untangle
Speaker 1: the complicated situation of Texas energy? What is the solution
Speaker 1: and how plausible do you think it is for that
Speaker 1: solution to be achieved before another event like this occurs.
Speaker 1: We want to hear from you. We try to make
Speaker 1: it easy to find us online.
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Speaker 1: It's true, and I want to thank everybody who reached
Speaker 1: out to me personally and said that we ruin their
Speaker 1: day with that episode about baby food. Sorry, but I
Speaker 1: think it's just better to know.
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