A Weather Channel reporter was interviewing a native Houstonian 48 hours after Hurricane Beryl passed through, cutting power for more than 1.8 million users in the part of the U.S. known as the “Energy Capital of the World.”

The resident lamented to the reporter that bitter irony while surviving using a portable generator, which can only muster enough watts to keep his fridge going and a couple of portable fans to quell the over-100-degree swamp temperatures they’ve had since Beryl moved farther north.

Walt Kelly did not originate “We have met the enemy and he is us,” but the phrase was used to great effect on a poster to promote Earth Day in 1970. It is still used in public discourse to describe, for instance, the potential results of man-made global warming — 54 years later and still heading to greater disasters.

Trevor Tyler

Halawa

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