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DAVE ROSS

Ross: We’re all one blown transformer away from the Texas freeze

Feb 18, 2021, 6:29 AM | Updated: 9:25 am

Texas...

Pike Electric service trucks line up after a snow storm on Feb. 16, 2021 in Fort Worth, Texas. Winter storm Uri has brought historic cold weather and power outages to Texas as storms have swept across 26 states with a mix of freezing temperatures and precipitation. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)

(Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)

No catastrophe is allowed to pass without someone saying “I told you so,” and so the great Texas Blackout is being blamed on: global warming, the Green New Deal, frozen wind turbines, and Texas’ determination to run its own electrical grid because Texans say they like it that way. Even if they’re too cold to form the words right now.

All of it is so … predictable. We know what every side is going to say.

If I were freezing in the dark in Texas right now, the only person I’d want to hear from would be the person who can turn the lights back on.

And I also think it’s unwise to get all sanctimonious and saying “they should have seen it coming.” Because sooner or later, all of us have it coming. It’s obvious that whatever’s riled up the forces of nature, our fragile little wired-up, plugged-in culture is always one blown transformer away from collapsing into that little white dot at the center of an old-school TV screen.

The best you can do is eat healthy, read books, and keep a battery-operated radio nearby – the one technology that always works.

And to you young people deciding on a career: Don’t spend your life cultivating some grand political philosophy to re-make human nature … learn how to fix stuff!

Strive to be that person who knows how to get the lights back on – instead of debating everybody about why they’re still off.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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