New York Bans Gas Stoves in New Buildings

The state of New York just became the first state to implement a ban on gas stoves in new buildings. No, no one is coming for your gas stove!

A new law in New York state will prohibit the use of gas stoves in new homes and apartments and most other buildings. The ban doesn’t only target gas-powered stoves, however. It would also ban gas furnaces and propane heating, CNN reported. The ban “effectively encourages the use of climate-friendly appliances” like heat pumps and induction stoves.

Specifically, it requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026 and for taller buildings by 2029.

Immediately, as you can easily imagine, people started drawing battle lines. USA Today referenced a Twitter post from a Texas Republican lawmaker with a quote with a familiar phrase from gun control arguments:

“I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!”

I don’t know why it is that Republicans seem to want to start actual violence these days. It’s more than a little disturbing.

You have to start somewhere

While some people choose to see only a limit to ones kitchen freedom, others find reason to celebrate. Those folks see a move to limit the reliance on fossil fuels as a win for the environment.

We humans are generally not doing enough to take care of the planet. We’re only making climate change worse. Sooner or later, there will have to be more such laws restricting things that some of us depend on in the interest of protecting the planet. This is a case, I’m afraid, in which we may well need to protect ourselves from ourselves.

Yes, there are people who still deny that climate change is real. Some also claim that if it is real, it’s just a “natural” progression and something humans have nothing to do with.

I’m not sure how you get through to people like that. I’m just glad that there are some people out there with a little more common sense who think it’s in our best interests to at least try.

Some really love their gas stoves

I’ve never had a gas stove or wanted one. There’s a good reason I wouldn’t use one of them.

Years ago, I was visiting some friends and the wife sent her husband and I to the grocery store to pick up something while she got a start on cooking dinner. When we returned just a few minutes later, she looked visibly shaken. She said she’d been cooking dinner on their gas stove when she suddenly realized a small blue flame had gone up her arm and singed her hair. She was fine, but definitely rattled by what had happened.

I’m not enough of an engineer to explain how a flame can shoot up one’s arm that way. I’m sure it has to do with the gas being on. How the flame could travel so quickly that it’d take time to notice it is hard for me to imagine. But I can tell you this particular woman is quite smart and observant. She isn’t absent-minded. I don’t doubt that she was paying attention; cooking is one of her great passions in life.

If I hadn’t already come to the conclusion that I had no real interest in gas stoves, that would only have sealed the deal.

I grew up in a home with the electric burner stoves. Today, I have a glass-top electric oven. I really like it. I’m trying to make myself learn to cook slower, which means turning burners down a bit from where I’d normally start them. A glass-top stove makes cleaning up so much easier. It’s no fun if something boils over and drops into one of those drip pans under an electric eye.

I’m sure that’d be true for burners on gas stoves, too.

If I were looking to move to a new place that had a gas stove, that’d literally be a deal-breaker for me.

I’m sorry some seem so unnaturally attached to theirs. But if they already have one, no one’s coming to take theirs away.

How do you feel about gas stoves? Do you use one? Have you ever used one? Would you want one?