You're saying the US is the middle ground between Texas and Puerto Rico - both parts of the US? Maybe you need to be more specific about where you are referring to.

It's kind of weird to see HN twists itself into knots while putting forth the question of "How did this happen, how can we prevent this". While turning away from the countless regulated states in the country that get cold weather and don't have their systems shutdown because they have some sort of regulation.

The middle ground is what Europe does.

The failures of what the US calls "regulation" is shown by California (where decades of under-investing in both modernization and upkeep has led to countless deadly fires) and the Texas clusterf..k.

In the almost 30 years I've lived in Germany and a bit of Croatia, the only time I can remember I lost power without actively causing it myself by careless drilling was the Nov 2006 europe-wide blackout.