By Eric Fruits, Ph.D.
My, how time flies. Just last month, I warned you that Multnomah County was coming for your gas stove. Now the Biden Administration is looking at a nationwide ban on gas stoves.
They claim it’s a consumer safety measure because gas stoves cause indoor air pollution. This is even though the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, a comprehensive global study, found “no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis.”
This is all part of the left’s “electrify everything” program. Under their forced-electrification scheme, millions of Americans will have to replace their vehicles, stoves, furnaces, and water heaters with electric versions.
With no alternatives, the local electricity monopolies will be the only power providers. Toothless public utilities commissions will rubber-stamp every price hike, and Americans will be powerless to do anything about it.
Even worse, what happens when the electrical grid inevitably fails? Today, people with gas furnaces know they’ll still stay warm, and people with gas stoves know they’ll still be able to cook. But, when everything is electrified, everything goes down when the power fails.
When I was a kid, they told me nuclear war would bomb us back to the stone age. They never told me the journey back to the stone age would be many tiny steps that begin with banning gas stoves.
Eric Fruits, Ph.D. is Vice President of Research at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
Neil Rue
Thank you for this opinion piece on the policy proposal(s) to ban gas (natural and otherwise) at both the state and federal levels.
In short, these policies are the stupidest strategic thinking ever. Anti-fossil fuel thinking has gone way way overboard. Why would America ever want to be tied to a single approach for anything this mission critical (i.e., energy supplies and usage)? The presumed danger(s) to the planet are hugely exaggerated, no question. I hope common sense policy minds prevail in the very near future.