In extreme Texas cold, Green New Deal turns into hot potato

Democrats blame climate change for the historic freeze, but Republicans say clean energy worsened the crisis.

“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott told Fox News host Sean Hannity during an interview earlier this week. “Texas is blessed with multiple sources of energy, such as natural gas and nuclear, as well as solar and wind,” the Republican governor continued, blasting the idea of the federal government coordinating a national transition to low-carbon fuels. Abbott faulted renewable energy sources for Texas’s “situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis”. But climate scientists and environmental policy experts say this read on current events could not be further from the truth, as a large swath of the United States copes with a massive cold snap that brought snow, ice and wind to communities unprepared for the freezing conditions.