Cookstove conspiracies

We’ll get to the politics of it in just a moment. First: I’ll never forget the day, nor will she: Her howls of delight, audible from the kitchen and across the den and down the center hallway and past the little sitting room and into the master bedroom, where someone had hoped to begin an afternoon nap.

“It works!” she enthused. A new stovetop. Gone, the coiled electric elements that glowed red and glowered menacingly. In their place, a half-dozen gas burners, blue flame rising from all six, somehow comforting. A woman who has always freely acknowledged that she does not especially enjoy cooking, and who concedes that her repertoire remains somewhat limited, was nonetheless in ecstasy. Understandable: Even a husband who needs only the microwave (or the takeout drivethrough) to sustain himself in her absence knows that gas is infinitely preferable to electricity in preparing even the simplest fare. A matter of controlling the heat, it is.

And now the political heat. By the time you read these words the Arkansas General Assembly may be considering legislation, or at least a resolution, decrying the Biden administration’s effort to ban gas ranges, even confiscate them. Or levy a prohibitive tax on their use. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Arkansas homes would be among the millions of American homes — as many as a third of them — that the White House would deprive of controllable cooking heat.

There is no such Biden administration proposal.

Back story: Last autumn the first in a series of research reports pointed to gas appliances — water heaters, central heating and air conditioning units, stovetops — as possible contributors to asthma and other respiratory ailments. Why and how? Gas-powered devices were long ago identified as sources of nitrogen dioxide and sometimes carbon monoxide. These two substances are found in most every residence, the experts noted, although levels of both are significantly higher in those relying on gas instead of electricity. So, too, the percentage of Americans dealing with respiratory afflictions.

Not that anyone was advocating eliminating gas in the kitchen, at least not in the foreseeable future, for either health or environmental reasons. Indeed, some reputable clinicians are skeptical of a connection between natural gas and disorders of the lung. Stovetops consume a minimal amount of gas when compared to HVAC systems and water heaters. Natural gas is definitely less polluting than other fossil fuels and, measured against coal and petroleum distillates, its household use is but a fractional contributor to global warming. Better ventilation and limited exposure to open flame, the consensus appears to be, are the immediate answers.

The gas hit the fan when a single member (a Biden appointee, duly noted) of the five-member Consumer Product Safety Commission stated the obvious: that the agency was duty-bound to act against unsafe products. If gas ranges were proved unsafe, well… Well. Within hours the commissioner was assuring the cooks of these United States that no one would confiscate their gas ranges. Too late.

“Don’t tread on Florida, and don’t mess with gas stoves!” tweeted Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, who wants to be president.

“If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!” dared Rep. Ronny Jackson (R – Texas), who is plainly excitable, perhaps calculating and quite probably a gun rights advocate.

Rep. Cathy Rodgers (R – Washington) accused Mr. Biden of “declaring war on American energy.”

The nuttiness and the falsehoods were bi-partisan, a little; West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, always anxious to keep his job, snarled that the White House “had no business telling Americans how to cook.”

To be sure, the CPSC — an independent panel, like the Federal Election Commission and the FCC, among others — will hold hearings later this year on gas cooktop safety. In the meantime, the White House, which shelters not the CPSC but a president whose wife cooks with gas at their Delaware home and who was caught unaware of any plot to deprive any of his constituents’ kitchens of blue flame, felt compelled (did it ever) to issue a simple statement: “The president does not support banning gas stoves.”

That should have put an end to the cookstove conspiracies and the political gamesmanship but, of course, it did not, and won’t. Rationality in our fevered age invites not merely ridicule but opportunism. Observe the new governor’s executive order banning a pedagogical approach that she essentially acknowledges is nowhere in Arkansas to be found, and pending legislation restricting drag queens. Cooking with gas.