How Right-Wing Gasbags Cooked Up a Fantastically Dumb Culture War
By: Alex Shephard (The New Republic)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The latest star of the culture war is a kitchen appliance. For years, research has shown that gas stoves are bad for the environment and for public health, particularly for the developing brains of young children. Cities and states—mostly blue ones—have begun to consider and implement bans, citing these health risks. And the growing body of research on the detrimental impacts of gas stoves has, unsurprisingly, found its way to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. On Monday, the CPSC's chairman, Richard Trumka Jr., told Bloomberg that "any option is on the table. Products that can't be made safe can be banned," when asked about gas stoves.
Right on cue, Trumka's comments ignited a firestorm on the right. "I'll NEVER give up my gas stove," tweeted Texas Representative and former White House physician Ronny Jackson, "If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!" Following Jackson's lead, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted out a modified Gadsden flag—with a gas stove over the words "Don't Tread on Florida." Tucker Carlson had a restaurant owner on to talk about how electric stoves were "less functional" than gas ones. "You will have to pry my gas stove from my cold dead hands," tweeted Matt Walsh.
Why do so many people want to die embracing their stoves? And who said anything about taking them away in the first place? Your guess is as good as mine. A few weeks ago, gas stoves were just stoves. Now they are fodder, symbols of identity, talismans in a culture war that will never end.
This is as predictable as it is tiresome. And the people who cover the ins and outs of the far-right perpetual outrage machine and the things they invent to be mad about should be wise to this game by now. The larger right-wing media and the political agitants employed therein wake up every morning in need of the next big target; an endless churn of these stories is necessary for the care and feeding of this propagandistic maw. It's all well-worn artifice—and every once in a while, the mask slips. I can't help but recall Tucker Carlson's palpable sense of exhaustion as he teased a segment on—get this!—the sexuality of the green M&M. "Because that's what we do here," said the tuckered-out Carlson on a recent broadcast.
woke obese lesbian M&Ms are coming for your kids pic.twitter.com/226zjlSiOJ
— matt (@mattxiv) January 10, 2023
Committed to a vision of the country in which liberals and elites are constantly forcing unnecessary (and often decadent) change down the throats of hard-working people, politicians like DeSantis and broadcasters like Carlson are constantly on the lookout for the latest bullet points in the "woke agenda." Gas-stoveghazi fit the bill in a number of different ways. In the first place, people are, to be fair, very attached to them. (I am attached to mine, even though it is both not a very good stove and objectively bad for me.) Mining these kinds of psychological attachments has been DeSantis's stock-in-trade; his trademarked move has been to cast himself as the primary opponent of the left's phantasmal "fun police." In his version, any move to protect public health in the form of recommendations—let alone mandates—is an intolerable harshing of the vibe. By contrast, DeSantis will let you continue to do whatever it is you feel like doing, right up to the moment it kills you.
This silly game requires the right to successfully get perfectly anodyne recommendations, information, and mandates reflected in a funhouse mirror for media consumption. And when the caricature becomes news, real-world knowledge falls by the wayside. Cigarettes, for instance, are bad for you, and the government discourages people from using them in a variety of ways. But as of this writing, they're not banned. Similarly, there's little reason to believe that any kind of gas stove ban is coming, and Trumka clarified as much not long after conservative luminaries lost their ever-loving minds over his comments. But on the right, even the knowledge that can help consumers make free and informed choices—including the reminder that gas stoves may not be good for you, and especially not good for young children—is apparently anathema, another sign of the fascist nanny state trying to dictate how you kill your own brain cells.
Gas stoves are particularly attractive as a culture-war subject because they are also connected to the natural gas industry which, along with the larger fossil fuel industry, is symbiotically attached to the right-wing funder apparatus. The gas stove controversy is—like the plastic straw meltdown of yesteryear—a way for the right to turn the effort to fight climate change and reduce pollution into digestible, culture-war items. As with getting a vaccine or having the occasional vegan burger, so goes the plastic straw and the gas stove: Politics-free decisions made by ordinary people are transformed by the right into symbols of political identity.
This is, inevitably, what happens when a political movement gives up on policy: Everything becomes identity politics. The right has long since stopped trying to come up with solutions to problems like climate change. There is no effort to reckon with the possibility that gas stoves may be bad for you. There is no interest in actually solving these problems. No one's thinking big picture: A long-term transformation from gas to induction stoves could promote stateside manufacturing, create scads of new jobs, and make entrepreneurs a lot of money—all things the GOP occasionally claims to lionize, along with idealizing the virtues of individual choice. Republicans are making the hollow choice here, opting for a cheap supply raw material for their never-ending outrage mill, because that's what they do here.
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Lol. This talking point has been has much fun as Biden's corvette security the last few days. I've seen so many good tweets mocking the "The Republicans made up the ban" after Democrats pivoted from chering for the ban on a dime after realizing how unpopular it was. TO clear up this laughably bad attempt at gaslighting let's recall what's happened:
1. Fed commissioner floats a gas stove ban relying on junk science.
2. Left wing lawmakers and pundits applaud the idea.
3. Its pointed out that far left jurisdictions like NYC ban gas hookups in new buildings
4. Sane people across the country make the idea politically toxic.
5. Scared by the response, Democrats claim Republicans invented the statement by the Fed commissioner and the laws already banning gas hookups.
The idea that the interview in Bloomberg should be fuel for a "culture war" is absurd, keeping in line with most things the right complains about.
If cigarette warning labels didnt exist yet, and were being implemented in 2023, we would have "conservatives" complaining that the tobacco companies were having their free speech taken away.
This is the left wing in a nutshell. Push something crazy and get mad that not everyone immediately parrots the new wisdom.
How dare you notice our insanity!
Cigarettes actually kill people and progressives are more worried about stopping the imaginary danger from electrical stoves.
It seems that the government over the years has banned the use of other items to help the enviroment and save lives. The same uproar was used when 2 stroke outboard engines were banned to help save the lakes. Now the 4 stroke or other versions of the 2 stroke are the order of the day. The world did not come to an end.
What are “other versions” of a 2T motor?
I don’t agree. I think the overreaction is coming from the left.
First of all, language like this . . .
. . . is hyperbole. No one is going to die for their stove. BUT - there is nothing wrong with preferring it to available options. And people have a right to feel strongly about the details of their home life.
There’s also nothing wrong with trying to put the alleged threat in context and weigh the cost/benefit of extreme measures like banning.
Ban gas stoves? That kind of extreme talk from a government official, along with the implication that it could be done with a simple government regulation (as opposed to Congressional action) is unwarranted, deserving of scrutiny, and yes, some exuberant backlash.
For example, the claim that gas stoves can’t be made safe flies in the face of something like a century of use by probably billions of people, who managed to live long, healthy lives in homes where they were used. And if the environment is in danger, then the claim flies in the face of literally decades of encouraging people to use natural gas because it’s better for the environment than alternatives.
So, acting like any or all disagreement on this issue is somehow unhinged is the real overreaction.
Trumka should have been more careful with his words. When the author asks "And who said anything about taking them away in the first place?", well, Trumka did, and the author quoted him saying it. So that question is disingenuous at best.
Now, we all know that our gas stoves aren't going anywhere any time soon. But that does not negate the need to be mindful of one's words and their effects when discussing policy and potential bans. Stop giving ammunition to the fearmongerers.
Oh, and they can pry my gas stove from my cold, dead hands. I can cook when the power is out. My gas fireplace keeps me warm when the power is out. During the recent very cold Christmas weekend, I was at my parents' house, and their gas fireplace kept the house reasonably warm, which their old electric baseboard heaters certainly wouldn't have managed on their own.
Before even thinking about requiring people to use different methods of cooking and heating their homes, we need to make sure that the reasons for using gas (or in my case, propane) are adequately addressed by the new methods. My propane service is only cut off if I don't pay for the deliveries. It's right there, in my back yard, ready to use whenever I need it. My electricity goes out for lots of reasons other than nonpayment. Storm, dead tree, car accident involving a utility pole, mistake made by a company drilling a new well for a neighbor (that was a recent one), etc. Natural gas service in general is much less likely to have outages than electricity. Until that changes, don't threaten gas appliances.
The article is not about gas stoves. It is about right wing culture wars.
The "debate" about stoves should be non political.
Sure, John. No mention of gas stoves in the article at all. That's sort of like the author asking "Who said anything about taking them away in the first place?"
You're not going to have a non-political debate about energy or regulation. When an official of a political administration mentions banning an appliance that is used by those who own it nearly every day, with no cost-efficient and similarly effective manner of replacing it, he makes it political. It's silly to claim otherwise.
Yes, but here in the world we're living in, a government official actually pondered banning gas stoves, or at least the manufacture thereof, without ever bothering to determine the level of risk they pose or a method of mitigation, if such is even necessary. And he did it despite the fact that for many, this would increase costs and decrease reliability.
Read your own seed, for crying out loud. The whole text is about gas stoves. They have a picture of a gas stove burner. The article specifically says this debate is based on a warning about gas stoves. It references research on gas stoves.
The article is not about gas stoves? Are you serious?
Huh?
For all of our benefit, JR, please fill in the blank point.
I dont answer your silly questions.
What question?
Best Stove Win
Joe Biden isn’t banning gas stoves. They might be doomed anyway.
Somehow, in a few short days, gas stoves have gone from a thing that some people cook with to, depending on your politics, either a child-poisoning death machine or a treasured piece of national patrimony. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion. Gas stoves! Who could have predicted it?
The roots of the present controversy can be traced back to late December, when scientists published a paper arguing that gas stoves are to blame for nearly 13 percent of childhood-asthma cases in the United States. This finding was striking but not really new: The scientific literature establishing the dangers of gas stoves—and the connection to childhood asthma in particular—goes back decades. Then, on Monday, the fracas got well and truly under way when Richard Trumka Jr., a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said in an interview with Bloomberg News that the commission would consider a full prohibition on gas stoves. “This is a hidden hazard,” he said. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
Just like that, gas stoves became the newest front in America’s ever-expanding culture wars. Politicians proceeded to completely lose their minds. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted a cartoon of two autographed—yes autographed—gas stoves. Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio declared simply, “God. Guns. Gas stoves.” Naturally, Tucker Carlson got involved. “I would counsel mass disobedience in the face of tyranny in this case,” he told a guest on his Fox News show.
No matter that Democrats are more likely to have gas stoves than Republicans, and, in fact, that the only states in which a majority of households use gas stoves—California, Nevada, Illinois, New York, New Jersey—are states that went blue in 2020 . Why let a few pesky facts spoil a perfectly good opportunity to own the libs? The Biden administration, for its part, clarified yesterday that it has no intention of banning gas stoves. In the long run, though, this may prove to have been more a stay of execution than a pardon.
Read: The gas-stove debate exemplifies the silliest tendencies of American politics
Beyond the knee-jerk partisanship, the science of gas stoves is not entirely straightforward. Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University, suggested in her newsletter that the underlying data establishing the connection between gas-stove use and childhood asthma may not be as clear-cut as the new study makes it out to be. And because those data are merely correlational, we can’t draw any straightforward causal conclusions. This doesn’t mean gas stoves are safe, Oster told me, but it does complicate the picture. Switching from gas to electric right this minute probably isn’t necessary, she said, but she would make the change if she happened to be redesigning her kitchen.
Whatever the shortcomings of the available data, it’s clear that gas stoves are worse for the climate and fill our homes with pollutants we’re better off not inhaling. Brady Seals, a manager at the Rocky Mountain Institute and a lead author of the new paper, told me that even assuming the maximum amount of uncertainty, her work still suggests that more than 6 percent of childhood-asthma cases in the U.S. are associated with gas stoves.
Regardless of the exact science, gas stoves might be in trouble anyway. Statistically, they’re not all that deeply entrenched to begin with: Only about 40 percent of American households have one. Plus, induction stoves—a hyperefficient option that generates heat using electromagnetism—are on the rise. “We’re not asking people to go back to janky coils,” says Leah Stokes, a political scientist at UC Santa Barbara who has provided testimony on the subject of gas stoves before the U.S. Senate, and who is currently in the process of installing an induction stove in her home.
Rachelle Boucher, a chef who has worked in restaurants, in appliance showrooms, and as a private cook for such celebrity clients as George Lucas and Metallica, swears by induction. She started using it about 15 years ago and has since become a full-time evangelist . (In the past, Boucher did promotions for electric-stove companies, though she doesn’t anymore.) Induction, she told me, tops gas in just about every way. For one thing, “the speed is remarkable.” An induction stove top can boil a pot of water in just two minutes—twice as fast as a gas burner. For another, it allows for far greater precision: When you adjust the heat, the change is nearly instantaneous. “Once you use that speed,” Boucher said, “it’s weird to go back and have everything be so much harder to control.” Induction stoves also emit virtually no excess heat, reducing air-conditioning costs and making it harder to burn yourself. And they’re easier to clean.
Induction stoves do have minor drawbacks. Because they are flat and use electromagnetism, they aren’t compatible with all cookware, meaning that if you make the switch, you may also have to buy yourself a new wok or kettle. Flambéing and charring will also take a little longer, Boucher told me, but few home cooks are deploying those techniques on a regular basis. In recent years, induction has received the endorsement of some of the world’s top chefs, who have tended to be ardent gas-stove users. Eric Ripert, whose restaurant Le Bernardin has three Michelin stars, switched his home kitchens from gas to induction. “After two days, I was in love,” he told The New York Times last year. At his San Francisco restaurant, Claude Le Tohic, a James Beard Award–winning chef, has made the switch to induction. The celebrity chef and food writer Alison Roman is also a convert: “I have an induction stove by choice AMA,” she tweeted yesterday.
If it’s good enough for them, it’s probably good enough for us. At the moment, induction stoves are more expensive than the alternatives, although their efficiency and the fact that they don’t heat up the kitchen help offset the disparity. So, too, do the rebates included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which should kick in later this year and can amount to as much as $840. The price has been falling in recent years, and as it continues to come down, Stokes told me, she expects induction to overtake gas. A 2022 Consumer Reports survey found that although 3 percent of Americans have induction stoves, nearly 70 might consider going induction the next time they buy new appliances. “I think the same thing’s going to happen for induction stoves” as happened with electric vehicles , Stokes told me. In the end, culture-war considerations will lose out to questions of cost and quality. The better product will win the day, plain and simple.
Still, gas stoves’ foray into the culture wars likely means that at least some Republicans will probably scorn electric stoves now in the same way they have masks over the past few years. And this whole episode does have a distinctly post-pandemic feel to it: the concern about the air we’re breathing, the discussion of what precautions we ought to take, the panic and outrage in response. The new gas-stove controversy feels as though it has been jammed into a partisan framework established—or at least refined—during the pandemic. “I don’t know if this discourse that we’re seeing now could have happened five years ago,” Brady Seals told me. Whatever happens to gas stoves, the public-health culture wars don’t seem to be going anywhere.
e n scientists published a paper arguing that gas stoves are to blame for nearly 13 percent of childhood-asthma cases in the United States.
And this is a lie. From the actual group that performed the study: " Responding to a request for comment, RMI manager Brady Seals told the Washington Examiner in an email Wednesday that the think tank's study "does not assume or estimate a causal relationship" between childhood asthma and natural gas stoves."
I almost feel bad for progressives who blindly swallow the tripe their leaders feed them. They are so brazenly manipulated.
h e scientific literature establishing the dangers of gas stoves—and the connection to childhood asthma in particular—goes back decad
Another falsehood. The largest study found " we detected no evidence of an association between the use of gas as a cooking fuel and either asthma symptoms or asthma diagnosis."
Enough said.
A lot of lefties also think this so called threat to health and climate is a just another batch of BS
The gop needs manufactured false indignations.
It's the glue that keeps them perpetually undone!