On the evening of 4 December 2017, two separate fires started in Ventura County, California. More than a year later in March of 2019, the LA Times reported that investigators determined that Southern California Edison power equipment ignited the two fires that merged into the Thomas Fire. The Thomas Fire, in turn, led to massive mudslides and at least 21 deaths. Therefore, the second event in this syllabus introduces participants to the realities of California’s increasingly prevalent electrical equipment-sparked fires as a way to analyze the costs and consequences of electrification. This event challenges the popular conceptualization of electricity as part of techno-utopic solutions (electric cars, LED lighting, nuclear energy, etc.). Event two introduces participants to the materiality of California’s grid system. This grid system was built on neoliberal and exploitative practices deeply tied to harmful colonial forest management that has sought to suppress Indigenous forest epistemologies including cultural burning. Dangerous wildfires such as the Thomas Fire also endanger specific populations—including Black communities, migrant Indigenous and Latinx farmworkers, and incarcerated laborers. These groups continue to face systemic oppression in US society and policy. The suggested field trip opportunity permits participants to learn more about Indigenous migrant farmworkers in Central California and the impacts of fires. Event two concludes with a “gesture outwards” that focuses on complications that arise from other so-called “green” energy electrical sources including the Genesis Solar Array in the Mojave Desert and the harms of other “green energy” extraction around the world.