Hurricane Beryl hit Texas this week. Heavy rain and strong winds battered several cities across Texas. I’m in Houston and couldn’t sleep all night because of the noise when the hurricane made landfall here. Houston and much of Texas woke up last Monday without power. At the time of writing, although power has been restored where I live, much of the city is still in darkness. The intense heat of the Houston summer has made it one of the most painful blackouts in Houston history. Things get even worse because of the usual increase in heat in the days after a hurricane hits.
Although Houston has lived through many hurricanes that have come and gone, this was my first. However, I am no stranger to power outages as I grew up in Charsadda where power outages are a constant in everyday life. However, this was my first encounter with climate change and the sinister side of capitalism, working hand-in-hand against the poor and vulnerable in American society.
Following a hurricane, the main government organization handling the grid is called CenterPoint. Think Wapta. Centerpoint is working round the clock to restore power. Their slow response and slow recovery have been heavily criticized. People created graffiti on many walls around Houston, calling them centerless. But I noticed something very familiar that I have ever seen in Pakistan.
The United States is divided into regions and zones called ZIP codes. They say here that your future is determined by the zip code you live in. Credit card companies and even banks determine how much credit a person can get based on their zip code. CenterPoint fixes electricity distribution in zip codes with high income and high business. I live in a nice neighborhood, but my business is bad. I hear ambulance sirens going off every 10 minutes. Old people are dying in their homes due to excessive heat. Sometimes, their dead bodies stay in their warm homes for days because no one knows about them or cares enough to get them. These old men died there to restore electricity, but being at the bottom end of the income ladder, their fate was sealed.
This is how we will all react when climate change is upon us all. That day is not in some distant future. There are only so many resources in the world, and only those with money and value will be willing to go to safety. We saw it during the pandemic, especially in Pakistan when Bilawal and Maryam advocated shutting down the country without concern for the poor of society.
Better citizenship leads to better assistance compared to lower nationalities. Governments around the world must save only a few. Aid is for sale, and those who can pay for it will get it, which, if you think about it, defeats the whole logic of aid. Help is for those who cannot help themselves.
Here’s help for high bidders in Houston. The mechanism for that transaction is slightly different than paying at a McDonald’s Drive-Thru. Think of it like flying in business class and economy class. Now, Centerpoint caters to business class customers, even if they can check in at the hotel, even if they have AC in their car, they have friends and relatives in other cities, so far they are welcome. The madness ends.
Realizing that climate change was initiated by capitalist greed is deeply disturbing. Today, how we deal with the effects of climate change is driven by the same capitalist tendencies. The only plus is that we got a glimpse of how we’ll fare in a future roughed up by climate change.
. „Gracz. Namiętny pionier w mediach społecznościowych. Wielokrotnie nagradzany miłośnik muzyki. Rozrabiacz”.