Well butter my biscuits and call me a climate denier, folks, Colorado’s green energy zealots have officially gone full tin-foil-hat crazy.
Down in Denver and Boulder, they’re strutting around like they just single-handedly saved the planet, ramming through mandates faster than a politician can choke out the words “virtue signal.” 100% clean energy by 2050. Hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles. Heat pumps in every home. Coal plants getting the boot. All while high-fiving each other for being such enlightened stewards of Mother Earth.
Bless their little, out-of-touch hearts.
Out here in the real Colorado, you know, the part with actual mountains, six months of brutal winter, and folks who still have to get real work done, their grand green fantasy is crashing harder than a cheap moped on black ice.
Go ahead. Tell a rancher pulling a 40-foot stock trailer through two feet of snow that he needs to ditch his reliable diesel for a fancy electric toy. I’ll bring the popcorn while he laughs you straight off his property. Those battery-powered wonders lose half their range when it’s ten below and the heater’s guzzling juice like a thirsty camel in July. Good luck finding a charger when you’re 40 miles from nowhere and the snow’s piling up higher than your property taxes. And if you find a charger, it will probably be diesel powered. Let that soak in.
And don’t even get me started on those magical heat pumps the state keeps pushing like they’re the second coming of indoor comfort. Meanwhile, mountain folks are watching their electric bills skyrocket faster than a mountain goat dodging a process server. When it’s twenty below and the wind’s howling like a banshee through the pines, most of us would rather have dependable natural gas than sit there freezing, praying the grid doesn’t collapse and the Rockies get a new owner.
Speaking of the grid, she’s already hanging on by a frayed thread. Long transmission lines, heavy snow loads, wildfire risks. Now they want to pile on thousands more EVs, heat pumps, and all-electric homes? That’s not a plan, that’s a rolling blackout with extra steps.
One solid winter storm and half the county will be eating cold beans by candlelight… while playing with their “CO Green Dream Edition” Jared Polis Mr. Potato Head, complete with windmill hand, a single left wing (nothing right wing allowed), and earmuffs to block out voter complaints. Last Christmas I reached into my stocking and out came that sorry tater, right next to a big, shiny lump of coal. When I asked Santa why I was getting coal, he leaned in and whispered, ‘That ain’t for you, partner. That’s for The Potato-in-Chief. His Spudness has made it so cold in my workshop production is down 46%. You try running a toy factory on solar power and a single left wing in the dead of winter. Meanwhile, my elves were reduced to burning Jena Griswold for Attorney General pamphlets to keep from freezing.’ His Royal Tuber really doesn’t care much for his bituminous bedfellow, but you never know. Sometimes opposites attract!

Here’s the kicker: these mandates weren’t written by or for us mountain folks. They were cooked up in cozy Denver offices by people who think “rural” means anything past the light rail station. They commute twelve minutes in their pre-keyed Teslas, live in perfectly heated downtown condos, and have never once had to chains up at 6 a.m. in a blizzard. Yet they’re thrilled to make life harder, more expensive, and far less reliable for everyone else.
So keep your fancy green dreams, Denver. We’ll keep our trucks, our reliable heat, and our common sense. Because out here, when the power dies and it’s thirty below zero, nobody wants to hear another sermon about carbon footprints from people who fly in private jets and deal in Bitcoin, they just want the damn lights to come back on.
Stay warm, stay free, and whatever you do — don’t let them obsolete your truck
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