MSNBC’s Chris Hayes presented through the dismantling of an emerging right-wing media narrative that an excessive reliance on green or renewable energy is the primary cause of the catastrophic disappearance in Texas.
On Tuesday night, Hayes began his show by going through a series of clips from Fox news programs and opinion programs from the past 24 hours, blaming everything from frozen windmills to shaky solar panels for the massive power outages to record low temperatures across that state.
“It’s 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, somewhere a problem and immediately without missing a mate, immediately tried to turn it into a culture war, in this case against that damn hippie liberal and their clean energy. ”
When California suffered last summer, Hayes pointed out that conservative media and Republican politicians mocked “liberal California” for pursuing foolish energy policies.
“Imagine how stupid you would have to think your audience is, the contempt for holding them, to look into the camera and try to sell them on the idea that windmills do not work when it’s cold,” Hayes shoots back that idea. ‘After Texas, Iowa is the state with the most wind power in the country. If you’ve ever been to Iowa in the winter, I can tell you from my own experience that it’s getting pretty cold in Iowa. Denmark gets almost half of its energy from wind power. I do not know if you were looking for it, someone at Fox News, but Denmark, very cold in the winter. ‘
In fact, the MSNBC host noted, the agency that manages the electrical network in Texas, explained that frozen wind farms are the “most important factor” for the massive power outages. In a Bloomberg article, one of the agency’s senior directors said the primary culprits for the millions of people without power were frozen instruments at natural gas, coal and even nuclear power plants, many of which could not overwinter their facilities.
“It’s just a lie that wind turbines, green energy, are currently the causes of the problems in Texas,” Hayes said. ‘It’s a lie like Donald Trump won the election, a lie as if there was widespread voter fraud, a lie that was pumped into millions of people’s brains while watching TV. And let us be clear, this is probably a false consequence of the election, because energy and how we produce it is the biggest single problem facing this country in the medium term. ‘
“Republicans and right-wing media, they want to take every policy issue and turn it into a painful culture war idiocy,” he added. ‘The fossil fuel companies want it too. They want to turn into a culture war, like the libs do not want you to have power. We have an opportunity, we have a choice as a country. We do not have to be political about where we distribute energy along the lines of abortion or policing. There is no reason for it to be linked. We can create a modern energy infrastructure that is more resistant to climate change and also cheaper, and that can also serve people better, and also withstand extreme weather conditions and also not heat the planet before we are in a serious emergency not. We can do it all. There is actually a lot of good news on the front. But the biggest obstacle is these charlatans who will seize every opportunity to lie to people for profit and for power. ”
Watch the video above via MSNBC.
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