There is a special kind of comedy that only government can deliver. The wind shows up, does what wind does, and suddenly your living room turns into a camping trip. Not because a tree hit a line or because you forgot to pay your bill, but because the utility preemptively shut the power off for your safety. Meanwhile, the same political class that blessed that policy is busy declaring that the next chapter of progress is making you run everything on the very grid they keep turning off. Tell me that is not the setup to a joke.
Here is the timing that got stuck in my craw. Xcel announces another round of shutoffs tied to wind conditions and wildfire risk. At roughly the same cultural moment, the regulatory religion in Denver keeps marching toward electrify everything. Gas stoves are treated like cartoon villains. Natural gas heat is the next domino. We are told it is all inevitable and frankly virtuous. If we just plug everything into the grid, the planet sends a thank you card and coastal donors send campaign checks. So long as the wind does not blow at the wrong speed and direction, I guess.
I talk to a lot of people who do not live on Twitter and do not mainline political drama. Good people. They pack lunches, mow lawns, try to make it to the soccer game on time. The Great Suburban Normie. They do not read rulemakings for fun. They also do not appreciate cold showers or throwing out a fridge full of groceries because someone in an office 60 miles away decided the breeze was too breezy today. The question is not whether the activists are loud. The question is whether these suburban families finally connect the dots from the rhetoric to the repercussions sitting in their own kitchen.
This is not hard to understand. Electrification mandates and bans on new natural gas hookups funnel more demand onto a grid that is already strained and increasingly hedged by weather. Public safety shutoffs are a blunt instrument. Sometimes they are defensible when lines are vulnerable and fuels are dry. I do not want a single firefighter put in a worse position. But the obvious contradiction remains. If wind risk is enough to kill your power on a Tuesday, maybe do not also outlaw the alternatives that keep the lights on when Tuesday goes sideways.
We keep hearing that this is just the transition period. The transition never ends. It always requires a little more subsidy, a little more patience, and one more promise that this time the modeling is airtight. I am old enough to remember when the same experts said we needed to punish baseload generation because peaker plants and batteries would carry us like Sherpas. Now we learn that my neighbor’s stove is a climate war criminal and my furnace should retreat quietly into the night. Subsidies are not science. If the new system can win in open competition on reliability, cost, and resilience, then let it win. But if your victory requires outlawing everything else, that tells me what you are afraid of.
Let me be fair for a minute. There are real wildfire risks tied to power infrastructure. There are neighborhoods where overhead lines meet deadfall, and the map turns red on windy days. Utilities are right to mitigate risk and modernize lines. Regulators are right to demand plans, not press releases. Nobody wants another catastrophe. And yes, natural gas systems are not perfect. They have leaks sometimes. Combustion produces emissions. If you are a family trying to do right by both your budget and the environment, you are navigating tradeoffs. Fair steelman delivered.
Now the part nobody in a downtown planning session wants to say out loud. Resilience is a mosaic, not a monoculture. The more you concentrate all energy needs into one delivery system, the more brittle you become when that system faces stress. Diversity of supply is not a bumper sticker. It is the bedrock of real-world reliability. Electricity and natural gas are not enemies. They are complementary. When the grid hiccups, a gas furnace and a stovetop can keep a family safe and fed. When gas prices spike, a heat pump can shoulder a mild day. When winter slaps, dispatchable generation keeps the grid upright while wind and solar catch their breath. That is called being a grownup.
Colorado families understand this instinctively. They buy four-wheel drive not to dominate the highway every day but to avoid the ditch on the days when the hill is iced over. They keep blankets in the trunk and a spare flashlight in the drawer. They are not deniers. They are adults. And they are getting tired of being told that responsible adulthood is somehow a moral failure because it does not fit the spreadsheet at a think tank.
Here is what I suspect happens next. The Suburban Normie notices that her kid’s homework cannot be submitted because the house is dark. She remembers the mailer accusing gas stoves of being worse than Marlboros. She looks at her utility bill, at her mortgage rate, at eggs, and she begins to suspect the people in charge are very committed to symbolism and very casual about consequences. She does not want a culture war. She wants to cook dinner and keep her house warm without asking a weathervane for permission.
If you are a policymaker and you want to win her trust, start with honesty. Admit that a decarbonized grid is a physics problem and a capital problem, not a press conference problem. Admit that we will need firm generation for decades. Admit that distributed gas use often lowers peak electric demand and improves grid stability. Admit that when you say no more gas in new builds, you are taking away a safety valve the day the wind forces a shutoff. Then show your homework. Where are the hardened lines, the buried feeders, the expanded rights of way, the real fuel-secure plants? Where are the procurement schedules, not the slogans?
If you are the utility, stop talking like a lifestyle brand and start earning the word service again. You owe ratepayers candor. Explain how much you have invested in vegetation management versus television campaigns. Explain how you will compensate families for lost food and work time when you cut the power. Explain how you plan to keep rates under control while you play lab assistant for every political fad. If the answer is to just keep asking permission to raise rates, you have already lost the Normie you need to keep.
For my conservative friends, do not just say no. Paint the picture of yes. Yes to all-of-the-above energy with real accountability. Yes to streamlining permits to bury lines in high-risk corridors. Yes to modern gas generation that meets stringent standards while delivering stability. Yes to heat pumps where they pencil and to gas where it protects families in a storm. Yes to letting builders and buyers choose based on cost and safety. When choice is the policy, the market will tell us the truth.
What now. If you are that suburban family, here are a few steps. First, take inventory. If the grid goes down, what keeps your house safe. Do you have a way to cook that is not plugged into the same system that just failed. Do you have a plan for heat if a cold snap meets a shutoff. That is not paranoia. That is Colorado. Second, speak up locally. City councils and county boards make decisions about building codes and hookups. Let them know you value energy diversity and reliability. Third, pay attention to the fine print of state rules. When agencies push bans by regulation instead of winning the debate in daylight, push back. Tell them to persuade you, not parent you.
Finally, breathe. We do not have to live as hostages to weather or ideology. We do not need to pick a side between the wind and the pilot light. We need grownups who will build a reliable, affordable system that works under blue skies and during a red flag warning. The wind can blow. The grid can stay on. The stove can simmer. That is not radical. It is responsible. And it is how we wake up the Great Suburban Normie, not with a sermon, but with a simple truth. Energy should serve families, not the other way around.
