Anti-gas stove fanatics chip away at liberty and insult Americans' intelligence | Column

Not long after the Battle of Yorktown in the American Revolution, Marquis De Lafayette wrote home to France. In the United States, he said, ''Humanity has won its battle, liberty now has a country.'' Now, we’re not even sure Americans should enjoy the freedom of cooking with fire indoors.

The battle over cooktops is more than gaslighting.

No, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) doesn’t have immediate plans to prohibit gas cooktops. Yes, Democrats have a clear priority of ending fossil fuel use, and gas appliances are absolutely a target.

Take what’s happening in Washington State as a prime example. On Nov. 4, 2022, the State Building Code Council (SBCC) required heat pumps for all space heating/cooling and water heating in new residential home construction beginning in July. Last April, Washington became the first state to mandate all-electric space heating and hot water systems in newly constructed commercial and large multifamily buildings.

Similar measures are already in place in cities and counties across the country from New York to San Francisco.

More opinion:Are Joe Biden's 'stovetroopers' coming for my gas stove? I don't know, but I AM ANGRY!

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Commissioner sticks his foot in his mouth

The political motive is addressing climate change at any cost.

For example, the new residential electric requirements in Washington have an average lifetime cost of $7,500. Consumers simply pay through the nose without any choice in the matter. That figure comes from an independent cost impact study the SBCC requested from the Pacific Northwest National Lab.

Realizing that consumers aren’t likely to get excited about bearing a materially increased cost for effectively the same temperature air and water, opponents of natural gas turned to the children.

To move an issue forward politically, make it about the kids. Enter the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) which released a study last month on the prevalence of asthma in children due to gas stoves. While the study itself doesn’t list any conflicts of interest, the Colorado-based nonprofit unmistakably has a view to a fossil-fuel free future.

Brady Seals, manager of the carbon free buildings program at RMI, noted, “This study shows that if we got rid of gas stoves we would prevent 12.7% of childhood asthma cases, which I think most people would want to do.”

If we could get rid of all the gas stoves in America, the RMI study purports that we could make life easier for roughly 650,000 kids across the nation.

Right on time, the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s (CPSC) Richard Trumka Jr. voiced his concerns over gas stoves. “Any option is on the table,” he stated. “Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

Trumka clarified his comments by a tweet later in the day, “To be clear, CPSC isn’t coming for anyone’s gas stoves,” he wrote. “Regulations apply to new products.”

For greater political impact, he should have considered saying, “If you like your gas stove, you can keep it.” Doing so while standing amidst a crowd of coughing children would be even stronger.

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Should we now consider banning pets?

As a father of four boys, I too am for the children. If RMI really cared about asthmatics, they’d ban cats and dogs from the bedrooms of American children.

A 2017 study not funded by an anti-fossil fuel think tank found, “More than 1,700,000 excess asthma attacks and nearly 700,000 excess emergency care visits for asthma each year are associated with exposure to elevated levels of pet allergen in the bedroom.” If America is driven by science, dogs and cats must be stopped at the bedroom door for everyone.

That’s obviously ridiculous. Why on earth would we adopt sweeping policy restrictions and mandates that can be addressed by education, a little common sense, and possibly labradoodles?

Information is power. Consumers should know that flipping on the fume hood while they’re cooking with gas is a great idea. It’s no different than telling asthmatic Americans with pet allergies that keeping those pets out of their bedrooms might help reduce attacks.

Parents of asthmatic children able to materially reduce the incidence of an attack with an electric stove would switch immediately. Conveniently, this dust up is purely coincidental with the Inflation Reduction Act’s subsidies for switching from a natural gas stove to an electric cooktop.

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Authoritarian policy prescriptions aren’t the answer

If I had stronger faith in the competency of the political class, I might believe this is part of a political agenda that might otherwise face popular opposition.

Climate change is real and poses a number of challenges for America and the world. We should absolutely reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Eliminating pollution in a manner that aligns with our economic interests is excellent public policy. We shouldn’t bend the knee to authoritarian policy prescriptions for climate change no matter how well intentioned they are.

America is pushing liberty out the door inch by inch because some of us don’t believe the rest can use sound information to make good decisions. When we behave in such a manner, what we’re really saying is that there’s no way someone could have access to the same information and reasonably reach a different conclusion. The next logical step is easy: Why give our political opponents the choice at all?

If that’s the extent of our political devolution, liberty’s flame will be looking for a new home with nothing but fond memories of an America where men were once free.

USA TODAY Network Tennessee Columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney raising three boys in Nolensville, Tennessee, with his particularly patient wife, Justine. Direct outrage or agreement to smith.david.cameron@gmail.com or @DCameronSmith on Twitter. Agree or disagree? Send a letter to the editor to letters@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Anti-gas stove folks chip away at liberty and insult our intelligence