Why don't they grit the highway or drive slower ?

[Angilion]

^This the engineering insitutes were writing circa 2000 to the gov saying we needed to build nuclear stations asap to maintain supply security from 2015 onwards and they did the ostrich act. Short term career politicians are not suitable for putting in charge of decisions requiring running long-term strategy and whole-life perspective with growth redundancy and failover etc.

Politicians are already blaming the people who warned them the system was going to fail and the people who have been trying to keep it working. It'll work, so the politicians will continue to not fix the problem. The point of democratic politics is winning the next election. The point of democratic politics isn't to fix a problem, especially if doing so is expensive, a long term fix (no obvious benefits by the next election) or can be used against you in the next election (like nuclear power). Infrastructure is well down on the list because it's all three of those things and it can always be put off until someone else's term.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

It is crazy - was watching a video earlier from someone who has a few inches of snow where they work, looks like up to 2 feet in places - they are more used to the temperature being 20+C even at this time of year.

Incredibly in Austin in a few days it’s going to go from below -10C to 25C. Such a huge change.

 

[Rroff]

I'm surprised they haven't had more fatalities with the temperatures by now - the houses just aren't built for these kind of temperatures with the power on never mind off.

 

[Rroff]

Interesting and tragic the events there over the last few days and a lesson as to why it is a good idea to be at least a little prepared for a range of less than normal circumstances.

I'm actually surprised how much they seem to have struggled with this event, even taking into account how unusual it is and how their whole way of life there is so removed from these kind of conditions normally. The few Texans I know have been very self-sufficient, well prepared and live in communities that are willing to pitch in to get through things.