MSNBC Chris Hayes offered the dismantling of a nascent right-wing media narrative that an over-reliance on green or renewable energy is the root cause of catastrophic blackouts in Texas.
On Tuesday night, Hayes began his program by touring a series of clips from Fox news programs and opinions from the past 24 hours, which blamed everything from frozen windmills to hesitant solar panels. due to huge power outages after low temperatures. to this whole state.
“This is a horrible situation, it’s driven by a complex confluence of factors,” Hayes noted. “But of course, Fox News and other Republicans saw some kind of suffering, some kind of problem somewhere, and immediately, without losing pace immediately, they tried to turn it into a cultural war, in this case against those damned ones. liberal hippies and their clean energy. ”
When California suffered blackouts last summer, Hayes noted that conservative media and Republican politicians mocked “liberal California” for pursuing senseless energy policies.
“Imagine how stupid you should think your audience is, the contempt you have to maintain, look at the camera and try to sell them with the idea that windmills don’t work when it’s cold,” Hayes replied. this idea. “After Texas, Iowa is the state with the most wind energy in the country. If you’ve ever been to Iowa in the winter, I can tell you from personal experience: it’s pretty cold in Iowa. Denmark gets almost half of its energy from wind power. I don’t know if you were looking for this, someone from Fox News, but Denmark, a very cold place in the winter. “
In fact, noted the host of MSNBC, the agency that controls the power grid in Texas has explained that frozen wind farms are the “least significant factor” of mass blackouts. In a Bloomberg article, one of the agency’s top executives said the main culprits for millions of people without electricity were frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and even nuclear power plants, many of which failed. winterize your facilities.
“It’s a lie that wind turbines, green energy, are the root causes of the problems in Texas right now,” Hayes said. “It’s a lie as if Donald Trump won the election, a lie as if there was widespread electoral fraud, a lie pumped into the brains of millions of people while watching television. And of course, it’s probably as consistent a lie as anything else about elections, because the energy and the way we produce it is the only major problem this country will face in the medium term. “
“Republicans and right-wing media want to take all political issues and turn them into some painful culture war idiot,” he continued. “Fossil fuel companies want it too. They want to become a cultural war, just like the libs don’t want you to have power. We have an opportunity, we have a collective choice as a country. We should not have policies on where we distribute our energy along the line of abortion or the police. There is no reason for this to be connected. We can create a modern energy infrastructure that is more resistant to climate change and also more economical and that serves people better, that can also withstand extreme weather events and that does not heat the planet until we are in a difficult situation. . We can do all this. In fact, there is a lot of fantastic news on this front. But the biggest obstacle will be these charlatans who will take every opportunity to lie to people for profit and power.
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
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