Ed. Note: This week features four posts on the Great Texas Blackout of February 2021, the greatest mal-coordination in U.S. energy history. Today’s introduction is followed by 1) a blackout prediction that came to pass; 2) the fallacy of market failure; 3) a 2025 MasterResource blog recap of the debate; 4) a 2025 IER blog recap of the debate.
Market failure or government failure? The Great Texas Blackout of February 2021 (five years ago) is a case study that will forever be in debate. Why? Because the counterfactual–a real free-market in electricity–was not present (versus ERCOT et al. statism).
Still, never before had a “market failure” of this type occurred in the U.S. electricity market, not even in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (the free-market era) when the technology to prevent blackouts was much more primitive.…
“For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism. (David Hughes, below)
In case you missed it (I did), here is a trial balloon from several years ago for us (normal folk) to accept the shortcomings of wind and solar and promote power outages as social policy. Rich and poor. Brown, black, white. Old and young.
“To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity,” by David Hughes (Boston Review: October 2020) came with the subtitle, “Waiting to ensure uninterrupted power for everyone as we transition away from fossil fuels will cost too much time—and too many lives.”…
“My way of dealing with doom-mongers is to let the person talk for a while and then I ask, gently: “Does feeling this way make you more effective?” – Amory Lovins
Mark Trexler, “Pushing Climate Boulders Uphill Since the 1980s,” posted on social media:
Our biggest climate risk failure hasn’t been inadequate technology or funding. It’s been our reliance for 40 years on predictable models in a chaotic climate system!
Welcome to Deep Ecology, the belief that Nature is optimal and fragile and any human perturbation is bad, even catastrophic. Trexler then lists his examples:
…Back in 1987, Wallace Broecker warned in Nature about “unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse” – arguing that Earth’s climate wasn’t a gentle dial, but a roulette wheel capable of sudden, dramatic shifts.
That was almost 40 years ago.