President Biden and his appointees frequently talk about a clean energy future in which carbon-emitting fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are all replaced by windmills and rainbows. But that future is a lot colder and darker than they admit.

Four million Texans found themselves without power this past week. Frozen windmills are not exclusively to blame, as some have suggested, but Texans are nevertheless getting a small taste of what it is like to live with unreliable power. For some of them, it is an unpleasant reminder of what it was like before they got out of California.