The federal government is no longer sure whether it’s possible, after over 100 years of widespread usage, to safely operate a gas-powered stove. It’s deadly serious, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. “Science” suddenly says that gas stoves are the new cigarettes. “Gas-burning stoves in kitchens across America are responsible for roughly 12.7 percent of childhood asthma cases nationwide — on par with the childhood asthma risks associated with exposure to secondhand smoke, according to a study,” the Washington Post said in its Climate 202 newsletter.
The asthma study that has triggered the latest uproar was funded by RMI, an environmental group with the radical goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 50 percent within the next seven years. Its lead author is part of the group’s Carbon-Free Buildings initiative. The study was not based on any actual scientific research into the effects on the body of having a gas stove in the house during normal use. It’s based on looking at previous studies from North America and Europe, making extrapolations about the number of children living in homes with gas stoves from data in the American Housing Survey, and then coming up with a mathematical formula to get the result that the authors wanted. Even if we accept the data as sound — that is, that children living in homes with gas stoves were observed to have higher rates of asthma — it does not remove other variables. Gas stoves could simply be more common in households that have other factors making their children more likely to suffer from asthma.
But follow the science we must, without looking too closely at it. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm used the study as a sales pitch for the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which includes tax credits for electric stoves. “We can and must FIX this,” intoned Granholm. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned,” said CPSC commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. That is the son of longtime AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, and he’s one of the many union connections that President Biden has appointed to government positions. With the exception of a stint in private legal practice, Trumka Jr. has only ever worked in government, his most significant career accomplishments are authoring government reports, and he has no background in science.
The Post newsletter admitted that the Clean Air Act only gives the EPA power to regulate outdoor emissions. Unable to countenance the thought of an unregulated part of American life, “for decades, advocates have urged the Consumer Product Safety Commission to fill this regulatory vacuum that persists inside people’s homes,” it says.
Gas-stove hysteria isn’t new among progressives. In the past, as its inclusion in the Washington Post climate newsletter suggests, gas stoves were treated as a climate issue. It’s not just stoves; progressives are coming for your gas-powered furnace as well. Some progressives want to ban gas-powered anything and replace them with electric equivalents powered by wind and solar. That’s what motivated the inclusion of tax credits for electric appliances in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was, as the press acknowledged after it passed, really a climate-and-health-care bill.
Progressives have decided to up the alarmism about your stove with two reliable tactics. First, make it an issue for the sake of the children, with one four-page childhood-asthma study publicized by activists and the secretary of energy. Second, say gas stoves are racist, no matter how tenuous the connection between the issue and race actually is. In a letter to the CPSC, a group of Democratic lawmakers wrote, “Statistics show that Black, Latino, and low-income households are more likely to experience disproportionate air pollution, either from being more likely to be located near a waste incinerator or coal ash site, or living in smaller homes with poor ventilation, malfunctioning appliances, mold, dust mites, secondhand smoke, lead dust, pests, and other maintenance deficiencies.”
In just a few days, Democrats and the media have conjured a moral panic about a commonplace household appliance, and the only solution is the full force of the federal bureaucracy.
In reality, gas stoves are preferred by chefs because they make temperature control easier. The discrimination argument goes both ways: Gas-stove bans hurt ethnic cuisines. Above all, though, should be the obvious fact that it is entirely possible to safely operate a gas stove. Millions of Americans do it every day, with no assistance needed from the federal government, thank you very much. Trumka is speeding past an intermediary step of recommending better ventilation, and going straight to floating an outright ban on popular appliances for everybody.
Democrats have long said they don’t want government in the bedroom, but they never said anything about the kitchen, and their appetite for regulatory overreach is insatiable. If this instantiation of the government-savior complex makes stoves into a political issue, conservatives should be confident about standing for sanity and stove choice. And when they eventually reassume control of the executive branch, they should not hesitate to reduce the power of administrative agencies that act as though they can ban any product that a few days’ worth of media coverage portrays as “unsafe.”