The projected Feb. 18 landing on Mars of the U.S. rover Perseverance was previewed at a NASA press conference Feb. 16, where the spokesman said, “The spacecraft is focused, the team is focused, and we are all ready to go for landing.” The target site is in the Jezero Crater, an ancient delta on the Martian surface. This will be the third major Mars feat in 12 days, with the U.A.E. “Hope” taking up orbit on Feb. 9, and China’s “Tianwen-1” taking up orbit on Feb. 10.The significance of “Percy”—as engineers like to call it—was stressed to the media at the press conference by NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas Zurbuchen, who said, “Whether it’s on the Red Planet, or here at home on our blue marble, science can bring us together and create solutions to challenges that seem impossible.” Among the challenges we face is the dramatic, deadly failure, under predictable peak storm conditions, of U.S. and Mexican power systems all across the south-central region of the North American continent, where an extended area of 14 U.S. and 26 Mexican states have millions of residents and extensive economic activity experiencing partial or complete blackouts. Ground zero ironically, is the energy state of Texas, where millions of residents have been without electricity for over 36 hours, and enterprises from petrochemicals, to Permian shale basin drilling are stalled. In Mexico, over 3 million people continue to have rolling blackouts, after the first round of 4.7 million people had a sudden power outage Feb. 15. The frigid storm itself, of course, causes big trouble, but the electricity failures are not a “natural” disaster. The damage and hardship come from the successful implementation for decades of more and more “green” low-technology energy generation from vast wind farms and solar installations, which—as the coal state billboards like to advertise, won’t produce power “When the Wind Don’t Blow and the Sun Don’t Shine.” The turbines on the huge wind farms are either shut down preemptively, or iced up and motionless. Plus, there are the additional problems coming from the limited natural gas transport and generation systems. Nuclear power in this region has been suppressed for a half-century, and no new plants are under construction. The still extant coal plants have saved the day as much as possible. Look at the vast dimensions of the years of green madness to date. The High Plains farm states have been turned into the national “American Wind Corridor,” which has now failed dramatically. Iowa is the leading state in the nation for share of its power coming from wind—42%. Next in line is Kansas, with 36% from wind. Relatively few people live here in the farm belt. But in Texas, with a population of 29 million, the wind corridor installations account for 10% of the state’s power, and this was the failure factor to literally put over 4 million people freezing in the dark, slamming Houston and other major cities. The wind barons T. Boone Pickens, Warren Buffett, and others have had a field day degrading the energy grid of the United States. In Texas, Pickens et al. put in the largest wind installations in the nation (28,840 MW). In Iowa (second largest, 10,200 MW), Buffett pledged, after his Berkshire Hathaway bought out Mid-American Energy Holdings in 1999, to make Iowa the first in the country for its power base to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2030, through “alternative” energy. Buffett cancelled a nuclear power project that MidAmerican had previously planned. However, these evil billionaires, and the debacle we now see in North America are only a foretaste of what allowing the Green Deal to continue internationally will mean. Green Finance now aims to go in for the kill, and shut down more energy, food, and all means of life. The message of the winter storms and the power failure is for us to force a change of course. It is past time to extinguish the Green Deal madness, and internationally to collaborate on the science and infrastructure to support mankind. Begin with health care infrastructure the world over. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Feb. 16 denounced the wind and solar so-called renewables. He said, “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.” Many state legislators—unlike the madness in Congress in Washington, D.C.—are likewise up for “seeing the light.” It is urgent to get out everywhere the new “Special Report: The Great Leap Backward: LaRouche Exposes the Green New Deal.” The LaRouche Organization will hold an international roundtable discussion on Feb. 27 bearing on this, including the dangers from worsening geopolitical confrontation. The invitation will be available tomorrow. The working title of the roundtable is, “Winter Storms Smash Reset Utopia; Great Power Cooperation Instead of War.”
