Saying you don't want more insulation and heat pumps is weird. You like higher utility bills? I get that the up front investment for it is unpleasant, but the remedy to that is government subsidies to encourage homeowners to upgrade.
You're assuming the person who complained has high gas bills.
Gas produces much more useful energy than a heat pump can. And the installation is much more simpler and space efficient.
If heat-pumps would be at least as good most likely they would be more successful on their own and there would be no need to be forced onto people by the government because "think of the environment".
Yes. I think a good example of this is the attempt to force everyone to use CFLs c20 years ago for light. Huge step backwards in quality of light, plus for many use cases they had a higher lifetime cost and shorter lifespan.
Then decent LED bulbs came along and noone needed to force anyone to do anything because the product works as a drop in replacement with lower lifetime costs in almost all relevant use cases.
