Lights Out

Abstract:This essay frames the author’s experience of Winter Storm Uri in Texas in 2021 as a moment that rehearses future climate events. The essay argues that the event illuminates the ways in which narratives about scarcity and sacrifice obscure the causes and the stakes of climate change’s present and future dislocations. The author suggests that the short-term calculations and thin margins incentivized by profit-seeking in energy markets are inextricable from human-caused ecological destruction. Moreover, the consequences of the pursuit of profit are directly linked to the lived experience of extreme weather events. Thus understanding and addressing profit-based incentives must be at the core of our response to climate change.