Austin at Large: Help Is Not on the Way

And lo, did the cold wind split Austin down the middle in its splitting place as was done to Texas, so that 55% haveth power and 45% haveth not. Statewide, this divide separates the red from the blue, among those who vote, but here in town it literally described those who retained electric service last week and those who went dark. Like most days in Texas, the misery was not spread evenly; unlike most days in Texas, it was visited upon us rather randomly.

Because last week's storm brought privation to the middle- and upper-class white Texans who have sustained the state's increasingly decadent and incompetent GOP ruling regime for the last two decades, every political leader with a microphone felt compelled to proclaim, over and over, that the collapse of the Texas power market was unacceptable and couldn't be allowed to happen again. Only some of them, mostly the Democrats but a couple of R's as well, finished that thought properly: Given Texas had consciously chosen not to prep its grid for winter, despite having a similar but less severe crisis 10 years ago, that collapse was inevitable and will almost surely happen again as climate change warms and weakens the polar vortex that has held such weather back from our northern frontiers. What would you like to do about that fact?

We Are All in the Toolbox

Because this is Austin, our leaders talk about climate change, as Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros did at one of the past week's many press briefings. Keeping backup drinking water on hand, knowing how to turn off your water supply at the street (or if it's possible to shut off water to your unit within a complex), how to disconnect a water heater, and how to disinfect water if you can't boil it – such skills and habits of dads and preppers will be increasingly important for all of us to know and master, Meszaros suggested, as climate change makes extreme weather more likely.

That's not bad advice, nor did it come across as callous, the way the now-ex-mayor of Colorado City (upriver from here, out past Abilene) did in a viral Facebook post that, while highly pressurized, made basically the same points as Austin's mild-mannered water guy. As Greg Meszaros or anyone at City Hall did not angrily refuse to help people who were unprepared, which even the red team knows is a bad look, they still have their jobs, unlike that mayor. But many Austinites do wish that taking such things into our own hands could be avoided.

Austin isn't as much of a political outlier as people like to think, but it is different from other Texas cities. We like government and trust it to do good things; we expect and largely receive high levels of service for what we pay in taxes and utility rates. We believe we all benefit when government helps our neighbors with greater needs, and we pay more to provide many with housing and health care and education and transportation – and water and power.

We have wing nuts here, as other Texas cities (run by Democrats) do, who fulminate about government waste and pinko priorities. That jive still works in other places better than here; our rightists don't have the courage to challenge our local premises. Nobody will gain much support here by suggesting we cannot all have equal access to high-quality services from a beneficent government. (This works in the other direction as well; you'll hear more about redistribution away from the entitled, to enable equity for all, in other cities than you do here.)

Working Much as Designed

Even the reddest Texas leaders used to also know that "No free lunch!" and "Sucks to be you, poor person!" were rude things to say and act upon no matter if you believed them. From the Capitol to Cancún to Colorado City, we can all see that's not really true anymore. Today (Thursday, Feb. 25), the state's energy agencies are due to be dragged through committee hearings in both the Texas House and Senate, where both parties will express great performative outrage but only one will bother much with empathy. Testimony from the public has not been invited.

Austin wants to put in the work that the state won't, but delivering on a commitment to serve everyone well all the time grows tougher as the stresses pile up. It requires more than just paying taxes and voting, and we are more accepting as time goes on that just doing those things entitles us to less than we may like. Nearly 100 volunteer and mutual aid efforts sprung up in Austin last week to deliver immediate help to those needing (as some still do) food, water, heat, and shelter. Meeting all those needs was more than the city by itself could do as it faced and fixed its broken infrastructure; that's not likely to be less true in future crises.

Austin owns its own power company, which has created its own microclimate within the organized chaos of the deregu­lated, privatized, and insulated Texas power grid and market. Many local conservatives have demanded repeatedly over the years that we sell Austin Energy into the same free market that landed wheels up in the ditch last week, leading to unconstrained misery throughout the whole Great State. I'd like to think that people will agree that maintaining Austin's own measure of energy independence is more timely than ever, but the creativity in service­­­ of venality shown by red Texas leaders up until now may truly be an inexhaustible resource.