Texas

People in the State of Texas are suffering greatly due to days of sub-freezing temperatures, snow and failure of the power grid.

The effects of climate change can be brutal and fierce.  The effects are more than just being slightly warmer in the winter or summers that last a little bit longer.  A late-autumn hurricane that roared through Atlanta, Georgia, some 300 miles from the Gulf, dropped a tree on my house that caused so much damage that even today, 3½ months later, workers are literally still replacing damaged roofing right now even as I write this.

But more than merely being colder that they're accustomed to, the people of Texas are suffering multiple days of lost power, so they can't heat their homes or cook their food.  Since they can't heat their homes, pipes are freezing and bursting.  Sewage is backing up, natural gas is freezing in pipelines, delivery trucks can't restock grocery stores and supermarkets, and the entire supply chain is disrupted. It's a cascading series of catastrophes - one triggering the next - and it may take them months to fully recover.  Maybe just in time for hurricane season.

Imagine being Texas Governor Greg Abbott.  You and your Washington representatives have been denying the science of climate change for years now, and as if the increase in hurricane frequency and intensity wasn't enough proof, you've just become the poster child for human-induced climate change.  You so despise the federal government, and are so enamored of corporate profits, that you unplugged yourself from the national power grid and let energy corporations and the oil companies run their little, independent fiefdoms of separate local and regional power grids. 

And now your citizens are literally freezing to death (people have reportedly taken to burning their furniture to keep warm after using all other available fuels).  Some are starving and soon opportunistic diseases will start kicking in (also, remember we're still in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic).

So what do you as Greg Abbott do? Why, of course - blame it all of New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Green New Deal.  Surely, somehow those dastardly dingbat Democrats must be responsible for all this.  "Solar power and wind turbines don't work in the cold,"  conservative Texans complain, ignoring the fact that their problems are due to an outdated and deregulated grid of natural gas pipelines.  And also, for the record, both do work in the cold.

Abbott brought this upon himself, and if Texas doesn't turn blue from the freezing cold, they'll turn blue politically and vote his ass out of office as soon as possible.  Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, too, as well as congressional embarrassments Louie Gohmert and Dead-Eye Dan Crenshaw.