[txlpo78]

Lol, this could not be a more perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. Nowhere in my comment did I say that Texas politicians are not to blame (in fact, I said the opposite) and yet here you come riding in to “remind me” of some actions that Texas politicians did that have absolutely no relevance to the issue at hand.

> You are asking everyone else to be reasonable while your own politicians viciously attack the other side and straight up lie to the American people.

I don’t personally control Cruz or Abbott’s actions. If I did, they wouldn’t be in office. But what I can control is how I react to situations, just like you can control how you react to situations. I choose to be reasonable and expect others around me to be reasonable, because that’s how things progress. It seems you choose to double down on unproductive finger pointing and playing “gotcha”, though.

That’s fine if you don’t like Cruz. I don’t like him either. But Cruz being a dumbass and taunting California has absolutely nothing to do with the issues that affected Texas this week, and you bringing it up is completely unneeded and unhelpful. Please go have your outrage session somewhere else.

[dna_polymerase]

I never liked the meme, but this guy has to be a NPC. Seriously. I couldn't agree more with you assessment about the current news/discussion life-cycle. Personally I think that the way news are produced and consumed fuels a vicious cycle that is more about tribes than information.

[qqqwerty]

Ad hominems are not welcome here. See my reply to a sibling comment[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26195450

[qqqwerty]

From your original post:

> and if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues.

One side takes these issues very seriously. We have been fighting tooth and nail to address climate change, improve the nations infrastructure and provide adequate safety nets for when things go bad. The other side spends their time screaming about socialism and stolen elections.

The point I am trying to make is that this is not a "both sides" problem. One side is taking these issues very seriously the other refuses to even engage in a conversation about them. Obamacare is a perfect example of how this played out. The legislation literally originated as a Republican proposal, but Republicans refused to cooperate and instead trotted out the "death panels" talking point. And here we are 12 years later, and they still don't have a replacement plan.

If you are actually interested in hearing about the solutions that are on the table you can get a rough idea by visiting Biden's energy plan[1]. These are very real proposals, with broad democratic support. But to get any of this stuff passed, it will likely require input and support from Republicans. And unfortunately, I have little to no faith that they will come to the table on this. I hope I am wrong.

[1] https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/

[JamesBarney]

Winterizing natural gas power plants isn't mentioned once in Joe Biden's clean energy platform. He also didn't mention anything about weatherizing natural gas generators in any of the debates.

Death panels and the ACA have nothing to do winterizing with natural gas generators.

There is a bunch of strong evidence that climate change is man made and real. There is much less evidence that climate change is causing more extreme cold events, or specifically had any influence on this polar vortex.

And wind did slightly worse than coal and natural gas generators when it comes to stability over the last week, so it's definitely not a savior.

There are a million opportunities to argue about the ACA or climate change. But this issue is about winterization/maybe connecting Texas to the national power grid. Can we just argue about that here?

Btw I voted for Biden, but the Democratic platform has very little focus on weatherizing natural gas plants.

[qqqwerty]

It is a high level policy agenda, not a 10k page regulatory document. There are literally dozens of references to making infrastructure robust to the impacts of climate change, for example:

"Americans deserve infrastructure they can trust: infrastructure that is resilient to floods, fires, and other climate threats"

If we are going to criticize Democrats for not explicitly discussing an extremely niche grid infrastructure issue in their platform, maybe we should also criticize the fact the republicans didn't even bother to publish one this past election cycle[1]

> But this issue is about winterization/maybe connecting Texas to the national power grid. Can we just argue about that here?

What is there to argue? Texas failed to adequately winterize. They should make sure to fix that. End of argument.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/8/24/21399396/republican-convention...