To the Editor:

Do you value clean drinking water? Thank the Environmental Protection Agency. Do you find it reassuring to be able to shop at your local supermarket, confident in the safety of the food you will buy for your family? You can thank the Food and Drug Administration for that one. Grateful that your boss cannot force you to work in perilous conditions? Hello, Occupational Safety and Health Administration. I could go on, but you get the point. The fact of the matter is: many regulations, by and large, keep us safe.

By now, many of you have heard about the uncharacteristically cold weather that Texas recently experienced. Millions of people lost power, with many of them being without power for days. Suffice to say, there is much suffering in the state.

Contrary to initial reports that renewable energy was primarily to blame for the outages, Texas Gov. Abbott and others conceded that was not the case. Simply put, public officials in Texas failed to adequately upgrade their power infrastructure. You see, years ago, Texas decided to have their own power grid, free from regulation. Unfortunately, with no proper accountability, much of the grid was lacking the maintenance necessary to withstand the latest weather events. What’s worse, the failures were politicized, attempting to place blame on air turbines, a symbol of liberal climate change theory.

The bottom line is: Mistakes were made, and millions paid the price. And Texas, nor any other state, must never allow such a travesty to happen again.

Angelo Hightower

Marion