People arguing for getting rid of gas stoves is one reason Trump has a horrifyingly real chance of becoming president again.
"Getting rid of gas stoves" is a non-issue strawman used to gin up more reactionary anger among people who don't even have gas infrastructure to their homes.
Gas infrastructure is leaky as fuck and eliminating its expansion and removing the oldest and most leaky parts of the infrastructure is uncontroversially a good move.
@ericjmorey And it's a very effective way to gin up anger even among independents who really have more important things to be worrying about right now. Push this stuff and help Trump. That's the reality.
The people pushing it already support Trump.
@ericjmorey @lauren
Not all of them.
No way my mayor backs the Orange One, but I'm not allowed to replace my gas oven, while it would be a net improvement to replace it with a new one. 🤷♂️
@ericjmorey @lauren
Perhaps "pushing the issue" is ambiguous upstream and I misunderstood?
It's real, it's not a fake controversy only in Fox echo chamber.
Mayor and City Council (slim majority of) are pushing gas stoves elimination as good global climate policy and local health-justice;
they're NOT pushing the issue as pushback LibsOfTixTox/Faux+Friends style.
I'm not angry at my Major enough to vote against my interests otherwise, but gee I'd like a new oven, and I don't want to buy new pans compatible with induction cook tops.
(Helping with Xmas dinner at Mother's is enough to remind me why we'd rather not go back to resistive electric with thermal mass in element and discrete click settings of Too-Hot and Not-Hot-Enough.)
Fixing the sources of pollution is always going to inconvenience those benefiting from the externalized costs of producing the pollution. There's simply no way around that. Perhaps a policy that taxed metered natural gas would have been a better option, but it seems like a toss up when dealing with infrastructure system level decisions.
Banning gas ranges from new construction is one thing (incl. refurb of rental units requiring a building permit). Buyers & Renters can choose new/old build or different town.
Banning 1:1 replacement with a less leaky modern unit in owner-occupied single-family residence without providing incentive to upgrade to something else is encouraging me to keep on keeping on with gas range & broiler and electric counter-top oven taking up space beside it - not the result they want.
Yes, use taxes are good nudges and are theoretically efficient for de-externalizing costs. OTOH in the current cost-of-living crisis where Economists say Inflation has stopped, we're good now and real people say "my costs are still up and my income isn't", it would be awkward to add the Carbon taxes we need without starting the UBI that we ought to be starting anyway.
@ericjmorey @lauren
(Mayor and Council are considering UBI to address Housing - which sounds good but a city that doesn't include it's whole SMSA in its polity creating a UBI is probably going to increase demand for housing in other ways - UBI seems to need to be at a minimum regional?)
I don't think UBI is something that can be successful on a municipal level (with few exceptions).
Local governments need to build housing units to make up for the decade after 2007 where housing production was cut in half due the mortgage market shenanigans (not to mention the 4 decade lag in housing unit production compared to population growth across the US). Just have governments build units, rent them, and include an option to purchase to each renter in the contract. Municipalities could create new neighborhoods quickly (maybe transit oriented, walkable ones with mixed use structures) and put downward pressure on local housing prices at the same time. This is probably asking a lot though.
@ericjmorey @lauren
Exactly