As can now be expected in relation to virtually every major news event, the human disaster currently unfolding in Texas was hastily taken up as yet another front in America’s unrelenting culture war. Leading the charge was Republican representative Dan Crenshaw, who decided to blame the chaos on “a mix of over-subsidized wind energy and under-investment in gas power.” Earlier this week, the state’s GOP governor, Greg Abbott, used an appearance on Sean Hannity to make a nearly identical case. Rounding things off was Tucker Carlson, who declared: “The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died.”

As Fred Stafford explains, the debate has to some extent been mirrored by liberals as well, who have taken up the cause of wind turbines with almost the same zeal conservatives have embraced oil and gas. In fact, while fossil fuel–based energy is undeniably the greater culprit for the state’s extreme weather–induced energy woes, neither has served Texas particularly well over the past week — the culture war framing many have internalized obscuring an awful lot about realities on the ground.

In different ways, both the fossil fuel identity politics of America’s Right and Texas’s conservative reputation in some liberal circles may be working to obscure the potential for a more radical environmental politics in the state. Indeed, based on recent empirical evidence, the political terrain in Texas looks a lot less hostile to a transformative green agenda than many might assume.