February 2022 Winter Storm Random Thoughts
As the snow falls in its heaviest amounts, I am keeping fingers crossed that we will avoid the widespread and long power outages of last year. Of course, it seems backwards that Republican leadership will be able to claim success for their "reforms" even though they didn't do anything to strengthen the grid. I've been thinking about how bad weather events reveal the weaknesses of Dallas and car-centric cities. The first and biggest way that having more people living in Dallas will help is that it's way more efficient to have people living close together than sprawled in the suburbs . This is because single family homes consume way more energy. All of that energy needed to heat homes is the primary strain on the grid during a winter storm or intense heat during the summer. The second way is that a more dense city is a more walkable one. The days leading up to the storm saw people rushing to the grocery store in order to get food for a few days. They knew that th...