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gas stoves
It's Time to Make Gas a Dirty Word
The natural gas industry is destroying the climate, and destroying people’s lungs, and it’s trying to lock us into this expensive practice for decades to come.
Jul 28, 2026
We talk regularly about Big Oil, but it would probably make more sense to at least occasionally refer to it as Big Gas—many of the same players are involved, of course, and the two are often found in the same places, but it’s been clear for some time that oil is not a growth industry. The rapid rise of electric vehicles in most of the world undercuts projections of future use—we’re at or near the top of the plateau now, and by 2030 or so the amount of oil we use should be going down.
That’s why the hydrocarbon industry’s growth story has been largely about natural gas. It’s used for many things—heating, cooking—but above all for generating electricity, and it’s on that ground that the fossil fuel industry has set out to build its market, stressing constantly that it is clean and cheap. Two important new reports in recent days make it clear how false those claims really are.
The first comes from a Center for Climate Integrity team led by Rebecca Leber and Rebecca John. Leber has a long record covering the industry—her 2020 report in Mother Jones about the industry paying Instagram influencers to plug natural gas was an early landmark in our understanding of pay-for-play social media, as well as the lengths the industry would go to in order to tell its fibs. (“#cookingwithgas makes food taste better,” says Camille, an LA-based foodie who poses artfully with her spatula, to her 16,700 followers.”)
But as they document in the new report, which should be read in full, this is a very old story. It turns out that the natural gas industry has been playing the PR game for a very long time. As far back as the 1950s, gas had a bad image: it was known to contribute to respiratory problems when burned indoors (more on that later!), and to local air pollution. And as scientists first started analyzing the greenhouse effect in the 1970s, most of the concern was about carbon dioxide, but there was a growing realization that methane—which is essentially what natural gas is—was the smaller but still important sibling greenhouse gas. And so the industry began doing what it did best, which is lying, or, to use the technical term, “public relations.” They constructed a whole mythology around natural gas, turning it into the fossil fuel equivalent of the “other white meat”:
In the late 1980s, the gas industry and major oil companies started to brand gas as a “bridge fuel”—a clean-burning transition fuel to a renewable energy future. In reality, they planned a long-term future for natural gas, while simultaneously undermining renewables, obstructing the destination to which gas’ “bridge” was supposed to lead. Over the next 20 years, the industry effectively solidified the bridge fuel myth by co-opting the science and oversight originally intended to keep carbon and methane emissions in check.
Working together in a growing coalition that included the oil majors and ultimately several major environmental groups, the industry managed to temper concerns about methane using strategies crafted by the same firms that for decades undermined the scientific consensus about the harms of tobacco. AGA and allied groups aggressively challenged the science around methane through industry-funded studies and the creation of the objective-sounding Gas Research Institute.
But their approach was multidimensional. While muddying the waters on the industry’s methane problem, the gas industry was careful not to deny the issue of climate change outright, instead focusing attention on carbon dioxide. It paired this with relentlessly promoting the concept of gas as clean—certainly cleaner than coal or oil—and positioning gas as a bridge fuel and climate solution. In the process, the gas industry solidified partnerships with EPA with the explicit goal of fending off regulations in favor of voluntary emissions management, while also recruiting environmental organizations that would lend legitimacy to their arguments.
I want to highlight the effectiveness of this strategy with a story about… me. In 1988, before this campaign took off, I was writing The End of Nature, sometimes called the first book for a general audience on climate change. And in it I wrote:
A common suggestion is to replace much of the coal and oil we burn with natural gas, since it produces only about half as much carbon dioxide. But it natural gas—methane—escapes into the atmosphere before it burns, it traps solar radiation more efficiently than CO2… As a result, switching to natural gas may have no effect on the greenhouse effect. It might even make it worse.
So give me credit for knowing this crucial science when I was 27.
But not really, because I think I more or less forgot it over the next two decades, as the gas industry rearranged the terms of the debate, and turned it into the lesser of two climate evils, the “bridge” to a future of cleaner energy. This argument was bought wholesale by politicians, especially Democratic ones—if you go read Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses, most of them include a paragraph praising the fracking revolution as both an economic boon and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; we were replacing coal with something cleaner. The Sierra Club’s leader, Carl Pope, barnstormed around the country with one of the fracking industry’s chief spokespeople, promoting this “solution” to the climate crisis.
And so it seemed novel to me when two Cornell scientists, Bob Howarth and Tony Ingraffea, about 15 years ago, began publishing data showing that leak rates from fracking meant that natural gas was no cleaner than coal—the argument that had been there all along. I wrote some early pieces on their work for The New York Review of Books, and then published a long piece in The Nation that made the same point I’d made more than a quarter-century earlier:
Our combined emissions of methane and carbon dioxide have gone steadily and sharply up during the Obama years. We closed coal plants and opened methane leaks, and the result is that things have gotten worse.
I’ve made up for my forgetfulness, I think, by helping lead battles against fracking, and against the buildout of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals; those of you who have been long subscribers to this newsletter got to participate in that latter fight, which we won in the Biden years and then lost in the Trump risorgimento. But if the PR campaign flummoxed me, imagine how well it worked on people who weren’t paying much attention at all (which included virtually everyone in political life, especially Democrats who saw natural gas as a way to have their green cake and reccycle it too). Many thanks to Leber, John, and their whole team for laying the story out in all its gory detail.
The other claim about natural gas is that it’s cheap—this is the formulation that “leaders” like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul are currently relying on as they link fracked gas and affordability as an excuse to cut back on moving towards renewables, and that data center developers are using to justify a buildout of natural gas generation.
But a report out this morning from the good folks at Oil Change International puts paid to all that. It makes clear that the industry is running out of the really cheap stuff—the fracked gas from the Permian and Appalachian shales that it’s been pumping for the last two decades. Many of those wells are playing out fast, and now it’s going to need to turn to the more “geologically complex” Haynesville shale of east Texas and Louisiana, and that will drive up costs—especially since more and more of the gas is, at least theoretically, going to be exported to Asia as the industry builds out massive shipping terminals along the Gulf of Mexico:
If industry succeeds in locking in unprecedented demand for US gas by expanding exports and domestic consumption, US supply may be pushed to its limits. Gas supply can only meet such high levels of demand if prices rise to cover the higher production costs of marginal gas supplies. This connects rising dependence on gas to rising energy costs. US consumers and those in LNG-importing countries must push policymakers to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and accelerate the transition to reliable, affordable renewable energy
The numbers are fairly startling:
Between 2026 and 2040, the average wholesale price of gas could be 80% higher than during the past decade of US LNG exports, a decade when energy price volatility was already causing hardship in the US and LNG-importing countries. Prices could double relative to the 2020 to 2025 average by the late 2030s.
In other words, those politicians locking us in to natural gas are guaranteeing that our kids will spend much of their lives paying far more for energy than they should—and far more than people in the rest of the world will be spending. Because politicians in those countries are starting to wake up. A big piece in the Times yesterday described the ways that many governments are now trying to “unshackle” themselves from natural gas, after watching the supply dry up with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. In the Philippines, for example:
The country’s largest solar project began delivering its first megawatts of power in March. That came two weeks after the outbreak of the Iran War, which pushed up energy prices and knocked out 20% of the global LNG supply.
“That was fortunate timing. It was like fate,” said Emmanuel Rubio, the chief executive of Meralco PowerGen, the utility-backed power generation company that operates and invests in Terra Solar and gas- and coal-fired power plants in the Philippines.
For a country that imports nearly all of its fossil fuels, the solar project has proved that “we can actually be, to a certain extent, self-reliant,” he added.
The collection of lies around natural gas are collapsing in other ways, too. Another new study, this one from an Ohio team, went back to those fears around gas and indoor air pollution that dated all the way back to the 1950s, and what it found was truly startling. As Gary Fuller summarizes, replacing a gas stove with an electric burner—say, an induction cooktop, available online for $60—reduces childhood asthma dramatically. And when I say dramatically, I mean: better than the best medicine:
Ohio’s publicly owned MetroHealth began the study in December 2024 but funding was terminated early by the incoming Trump administration. It had been designed to investigate if replacing gas cooking improved asthma for 1,200 people living near Cleveland, Ohio.
Prof Ash Sehgal of Case Western Reserve University, the project’s leader, said: “We had completed the project at fewer than 100 households. As a result, over 1,100 households were unable to benefit. We also had to lay off about 20 project staff.”
The team finished the stove replacements that were underway and closed the project, but to the researchers’ surprise, the benefits could be clearly detected even in the scaled-down study of 72 homes.
Sehgal said: “We were surprised when we analysed the results and found a very large effect size. The improvements in asthma symptoms following stove change were similar to–or even greater than–those reported in clinical trials of commonly used asthma medications.”
Angela Bland, a 38-year-old resident of Akron, Ohio, said: “I didn’t realize my gas stove was the issue until I used the electric stove. I now need my inhaler way less often.”
If you want more on this study, check out Sammy Roth’s Climate Colored Goggles newsletter. He interviewed Segal too: “Our improvement was about twice as much as you typically see with medical treatment of asthma,” the researcher said. It truly is remarkable to think how much good we could do simply by dousing the campfire that most people have in their kitchen.
Anyway, to summarize: The natural gas industry is destroying the climate, and destroying people’s lungs, and it’s trying to lock us into this expensive practice for decades to come.
Any effort to slow it down is met with massive resistance. In Colorado, for instance, some towns have tried to prevent gas hookups in new buildings, requiring them to go all-electric. The industry has responded by organizing on behalf of a constitutional amendment called the “Right to Natural Gas,” which will go on the November ballot. As Maya McDaniel writes:
The proposed amendment states that “producers and utilities have the right to sell natural gas to homes and businesses.” That could force changes to building codes that encourage electric heating and cooking, undoing progress toward electrification.
“Really, it’s just a cynical attempt to lock fossil fuel industry profits into the state constitution,” said Kelly Nordini, CEO of Conservation Colorado, an environmental nonprofit. “That’s bad for people’s pocketbooks, for clean air, for clean water; it has no provisions for public health or safety.”
Really, the first lucky break for natural gas came back in the 19th century, when it acquired that moniker, to differentiate it from “manufactured” or “town” gas, made by burning coal in the absence of air, and then piped through municipalities for street lighting and other tasks. These gasworks shut down as big deposits of naturally occurring gas were discovered, hence the name.
I’ve taken to calling it ‘fracked gas’ in recent years, since that industry term for the new methods of liberating the fuel from tight rocks makes it sound almost as disgusting as it is. “Fossil gas” works too, or perhaps “asthma gas.” But our job is to make it a dirty word of some kind. The future depends on it.
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I Measured Pollution From Hundreds of Gas Stoves; What I Learned Still Haunts Me
To protect D.C. and Maryland residents from the health-harming impacts of NO2, policymakers must act to help households move to pollution-free, efficient electric appliances such as induction cooktops.
Jan 31, 2025
We were squeezed together in the small, upstairs bedroom of a single-family home in D.C.’s Columbia Heights neighborhood. George, the homeowner and father of a nine-month-old, had brought us there to test for nitrogen dioxide emissions from his gas stove.
Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is one of several pollutants created when gas is burned. A pulmonary irritant, NO2 is invisible, odorless, and linked to asthma and other health concerns. A recent study found that NO2 may affect child cognitive development, with higher exposure in infants associated with increased risk of behavioral problems later on. There is no indoor safety standard for NO2, but the Environmental Protection Agency has established an outdoor health protective standard of 100 parts per billion for one-hour exposure. George’s kitchen had registered an alarming 294 ppb.
George had asked us to test his nursery upstairs, well away from the gas stove. We placed the detector in the crib and waited. Then, a reading of 190 ppb flashed across the screen—nearly twice the EPA’s maximum exposure limit.
There is no reason a nine-month-old—or any of us—should be breathing health-harming nitrogen dioxide in our homes.
George’s house was one of nearly 700 D.C. and Maryland homes we tested as part of a community study to investigate hazardous emissions from gas. We chose to focus on gas stoves because they are located in the middle of families’ living areas and generally not vented outside. In apartments, single-family homes, condos, and row houses, we recorded NO2 levels 15 minutes and 30 minutes after turning on the stove, and took a third reading 15 minutes after turning the stove off.
Nearly two-thirds of the kitchens we tested registered NO2 levels exceeding 100 parts per billion. In D.C., 77% of kitchens register NO2 over 100 ppb, with an average high reading of 181 ppb.
The stories are endless. In an American University student apartment NO2 levels spiked to 862 ppb—over eight times the recommended limit—and only decreased after turning on a vent fan. In other homes, ventilation fans seemed to have no impact at all. We found significant NO2 in the upstairs bedrooms we tested. Some kitchens tested had elevated NO2 levels one or two hours after the gas stove was turned off.
Increasing ventilation can help reduce NO2 exposure from gas stoves. But to protect D.C. and Maryland residents from the health-harming impacts of NO2, policymakers must act to help households move to pollution-free, efficient electric appliances such as induction cooktops.
Induction cooking is becoming the preferred choice among chefs due to its efficiency, safety, and ease of use. Chef Jon Kung switched to induction cooking because his building lacked ventilation and gas stoves produced indoor air pollution. Award-winning chef Eric Ripert says he “fell in love” with induction within days.
Induction cooktops rely on electromagnetism to transfer heat to the pan, eliminating the combustion that creates NO2. About 90% of the energy goes toward cooking food, while gas stoves waste 70% of their energy heating the surrounding air. With no flame and little residual heat, induction stoves keep kitchens cool, reduce the risk of burns, and are easy to clean.
Officials in D.C. and Montgomery Country have already taken steps to incentivize electrification, including adopting healthy building standards that ensure new homes are built with electric equipment. Low-income D.C. residents can now apply for free home upgrades to install clean energy heating and cooking equipment thanks to the recent passage of the Healthy Homes Act.
These are steps in the right direction, but policymakers must do more to reduce reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure and to block gas companies from spending consumer money on new pipelines that raise costs for customers and lock in our reliance on gas.
With an influx of federal and state incentives, now is the best time to electrify. D.C. recently unveiled programs funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, which provide up to $800 for an induction cooktop and $2,000 for an electric panel upgrade to income-eligible residents. Federal tax breaks for clean, efficient heating equipment and cooking equipment are available to all residents regardless of income.
Our Beyond Gas study shows that burning fossil fuels in our homes is exposing us to pollutants that make us sicker. There is no reason a nine-month-old—or any of us—should be breathing health-harming nitrogen dioxide in our homes. Clean energy alternatives are available and far superior. Our leaders need to act now to help D.C. and Maryland residents make this change.
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The Ex-Presidents, Banks, Car Companies, and Restaurants Selling Out Earth’s Future
We are buying ourselves, and everyone who comes after us, a life in endless wartime, all because we can’t be bothered to rapidly transform our energy system.
May 16, 2024
In one of the gigglier moments in modern movie history, Dr. Evil, awakening from 30 years of cryogenic sleep, threatens the world with utter destruction unless it pays him… one million dollars. (His criminal accomplices explain inflation to him, and he ups his price to $100 billion; happily, Austin Powers saves the world, and the cash).
Former U.S. President Donald Trump has his own number—a clean billion, which is what he told fossil fuel executives they should pay in return for giving them literally anything they want in his next administration. That they would use that power to once-and-for-all overheat the Earth is a given; the level of corruption and danger here is so over the top that it almost seems like a movie—but not a comedy, unless you run ExxonMobil.
That’s not the only valuation we’ve gotten in recent weeks. In a largely overlooked story a few weeks ago, a Reuters team obtained the report that Citibank had prepared for the Federal Reserve, outlining its exposure to climate risk—or, more exactly, the risk of the world actually taking this problem seriously and tackling it head-on. The report said that
The analysis said that if efforts to combat climate change ramped up enough to put the world on a path to bringing greenhouse gas emissions down to zero on a net basis by 2050, the bank would suffer $10.3 billion in loan losses over 10 years, more than the $7.1 billion in losses expected if those efforts did not speed up…
While the estimated hit to Citigroup would be small in relation to the $730 billion wholesale loan book assessed, the analysis provides rare insight into how the transition away from fossil fuels could affect a top Wall Street bank in a key area of its business.
The losses would occur because some of Citigroup’s borrowers in the oil, gas, and real estate sectors would take a financial hit if the world was immediately put on track to curb overall greenhouse gas emissions to zero on a net basis by 2050, the document reviewed by Reuters showed.
One way of reading this is to say that Citibank values the Earth at something less than the $3.2 billion it would lose if we stopped climate change. We can make this assumption because Citibank—along with its confreres in the big banking world—continue to pour huge amounts of money into the fossil fuel sector, completely ignoring the advice of scientists, and of the International Energy Agency which called for a halt to all new investments in 2021. The latest evidence of their incredible disregard for the future came this week, when Rainforest Action Network and partners issued the 2024 version of the invaluable Banking on Climate Chaos report. The 2024 edition shows that Citi has tossed just shy of $400 billion at the industry since the Paris climate accords were signed, good for second place on the all-time list just behind Chase and just ahead of Bank of America.
This explains why, among other things, there will be a Summer of Heat on Wall Street, starting soon—with civil disobedience centered on Citibank. (There’s even an Elders Week, which Third Act is helping coordinate—if you can remember banking before ATMs, we’ll see you July 8-13.)
But there have been other estimates recently, far more realistic.
I wrote a few weeks ago about a new study that found global incomes would fall by a fifth. Now there’s an even newer study that goes that one better. It comes from economists at Harvard and Northwestern, and instead of using the traditional method of examining how much damage climate change will do country by country and then adding it up, they attempt to model the effects of global climate shocks—big disasters. There’s an excellent summary by one of the authors on Twitter, but I will highlight just a couple of points. Assuming the temperature increases 3°C—which is more or less the track we’re on, and I think pretty much guaranteed if Trump and his ilk succeed in slowing the transition to a clean energy economy—then there will be
a 31% welfare loss in permanent consumption equivalent in 2024, that grows to nearly 52% by 2100. Our results also indicate that world GDP per capita would be 37% higher today had no warming occurred between 1960 and 2019 instead of the 0.75°C observed increase in global mean temperature.
Those numbers to those who know how to read them are stark and staggering—the world would be far richer today were it not for global warming, and that number will just keep going up. But here’s the line that sticks in my mind:
“These magnitudes are comparable to the economic damage caused by fighting a war domestically and permanently.”
That is to say, we are buying ourselves, and everyone who comes after us, a life in endless wartime, all because we can’t be bothered to rapidly transform our energy system. And when I say “can’t be bothered,” I mean it. The oil companies are treacherous, but that makes venal sense: They’ve got no other business to fall back on (Well, except for Shell, which is learning to market completely bogus carbon credits). The banks are, in a sense, even more venal: Citi would lose a small fraction of its business if it behaved with any kind of moral clarity, but that is clearly too much to ask.
But others are… just ridiculous. In a remarkable piece of reporting, Bloomberg’s Ben Elgin details how the California Restaurant Association put the kibosh on the city of Berkeley’s plan to prevent new restaurants from using gas, and instead getting them to use induction cooktops. Read it and weep:
When Berkeley became the first city in the country to ban the extension of gas pipes into new buildings, it targeted a contentious source of climate pollution. The combustion of gas inside of homes and businesses to power things like furnaces, water heaters, and stoves accounts for 9% of California’s emissions, or 33 million metric tons of heat-trapping gases per year, equivalent to the entire climate footprint of Hong Kong.
With the U.S. gas system continuing to expand—the industry connects one new customer to the gas grid each minute—Berkeley was the first to try to stop this climate problem from becoming bigger. Since it enacted its ordinance in 2019, more than 100 cities, counties, and states across the country have followed.
Today, these efforts are reeling. The California Restaurant Association took the city to court in November 2019, arguing that its 20,000-plus members preferred cooking with a gas flame and that, even though the rule wouldn’t require changes to existing buildings, such an ordinance would limit their options when opening new locations. Moreover, they argued, federal energy laws preempt these aggressive local ordinances.
After a see-sawing legal battle, the restaurants prevailed. When Berkeley’s last-ditch request for a rehearing was rejected earlier this year, the city in March canceled its ordinance, prompting a jubilant CRA to declare it a “significant triumph for chefs and restaurateurs.”
Now, Bloomberg Green has learned, a coalition of gas companies and their supporters are planning to wield the restaurants’ legal victory to beat back similar rules across the western U.S. This puts restaurants directly at odds with a hospitable planet, as there’s no feasible pathway to avert catastrophic warming if places like California don’t sharply reduce gas combustion in buildings, according to climate experts.
I’m the cook in our household, and I’ve used induction cooktops for years—$60 from Amazon. They work better than gas—boil faster, finer temperature control—but even if they worked worse, who cares? We’ve got to actually make some changes or we can’t actually have a working world. Who’s going to go out for dinner on a melting planet. It’s incredible to have perfectly fine substitutes for fossil-powered technology and then refuse to use it: Take, for example, the automakers, who a new study this week found to be united in their efforts to sabotage the transition to EVs
An analysis of climate policy advocacy in seven key regions (Australia, EU, India, Japan, South Korea, U.K., and the U.S.) finds that auto associations are leading efforts to delay and weaken key climate rules for light-duty vehicles.
In the U.S., the Alliance for Automotive Innovation has led opposition to ambitious fuel economy (CAFE) and GHG emissions standards, while in Australia, the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) led a strategic campaign to weaken fuel efficiency standards.
Of the eight automotive industry associations included in this study, every automaker (except Tesla), remains a member of at least two of these groups, with most automakers a member of at least five of these associations globally.
If all of this seems overwrought to you—how could climate change actually do that much damage to our economy?—then finish off by reading a report by the veteran climate reporter Chris Flavelle in today’s Times. It delineates what global warming is currently doing to the home insurance market in the U.S.—which is to say, threatening to collapse it:
The insurance turmoil caused by climate change—which had been concentrated in Florida, California, and Louisiana—is fast becoming a contagion, spreading to states like Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio, Utah, and Washington. Even in the Northeast, where homeowners insurance was still generally profitable last year, the trends are worsening.
In 2023, insurers lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states, more than a third of the country, according to a New York Times analysis of newly available financial data. That’s up from 12 states five years ago, and eight states in 2013. The result is that insurance companies are raising premiums by as much as 50% or more, cutting back on coverage or leaving entire states altogether. Nationally, over the last decade, insurers paid out more in claims than they received in premiums, according to the ratings firm Moody’s, and those losses are increasing.
The growing tumult is affecting people whose homes have never been damaged and who have dutifully paid their premiums, year after year. Cancellation notices have left them scrambling to find coverage to protect what is often their single biggest investment. As a last resort, many are ending up in high-risk insurance pools created by states that are backed by the public and offer less coverage than standard policies. By and large, state regulators lack strategies to restore stability to the market.
As the former state insurance commissioner of California put it, “I believe we’re marching toward an uninsureable future.”
And since the insurance industry is the part of our capitalist system that we task with understanding risk, that’s saying something.
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Big Gas Has Followed the Tobacco Playbook for Spreading Lies and Indoor Air Pollution
The industry has been gaslighting us by promoting the idea that “cooking with gas” is a good thing, despite knowing as far back as 1970 that gas stoves pose a threat to public health and the environment.
Apr 11, 2024
During my first decade in Washington, D.C., my windows were caked with soot from the diesel buses that ran up and down my street. So when I found a place to live just a few blocks away on a street without buses, it was a relief. What I didn’t know is that my health was still at risk—from indoor pollution.
Thanks to a recent test conducted by my local Sierra Club chapter, I learned that the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) emissions from the hoodless gas stove I’ve been cooking on for the last 30 years in my poorly ventilated galley kitchen exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum safe level of 100 parts per billion (ppb) for a one-hour exposure outdoors. (There is no EPA standard for indoor air.)
The highest level the Sierra Club’s air quality monitor detected when my oven and two burners were on was 103 ppb, but even at low concentrations, NO2 irritates the upper respiratory tract and lungs, and longtime exposures have been associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and childhood asthma.
The gas industry—much like the oil industry—has cribbed heavily from the tobacco industry’s playbook to block government regulation by manufacturing doubt about the reality and seriousness of its “NOx problem.”
Fortunately, I don’t have COPD and I didn’t contract asthma when I was young, perhaps partly because I grew up in a home with an electric range. But other Washingtonians may not be as lucky. While less than 40% of households nationwide cook on a gas stove, 62% of households in Washington do. Perhaps not coincidentally, a higher percentage of adults in the district suffer from asthma than in all of the 50 states, and the prevalence of asthma among children under 18 in the nation’s capital is second only to that of kids in Mississippi.
Certainly, gas stoves are just one source of air pollution in the district. But a study published in the December 2022 issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health calculated that gas stoves are responsible for 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the United States, comparable to the risk posed to children by secondhand smoke. The situation is even worse in some states. According to the study, gas stoves trigger more than 20% of childhood asthma cases in California and Illinois, and nearly 19% in New York. The study concluded that these childhood asthma cases could have theoretically been prevented by using electric appliances.
I was not fully aware of this issue until roughly a year ago, when I wrote a column about it, and I’ve been working for environmental organizations for 25 years. No doubt, the fact that gas stoves are hazardous to our health was also news to most Americans. What accounts for that?
50 Years of Disinformation
It’s no longer a secret that the U.S. oil industry was well aware as early as 1957 that its products threaten the climate. As we now know, fossil fuel companies lied about it for decades to protect their profits. Thanks to exemplary spade work by news organizations and advocacy groups (including my organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists), we have known about the industry’s duplicity for at least 20 years.
Less known is the fact that the gas utility industry has been engaged in the same kind of deceit. According to an October 2023 report by the Climate Investigations Center (CIC), a nonprofit watchdog organization, the industry has been gaslighting us by promoting the idea that “cooking with gas” is a good thing, despite knowing as far back as 1970 that gas stoves pose a threat to public health and the environment.
Now that there is a desperate need to slash global warming emissions worldwide to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, it is critical to rapidly phase out the use of all fossil fuels. That would of course include fossil gas, which consists of 85-90% methane, a significantly more potent heat-trapping gas than carbon dioxide.
A 2022 study found that gas stoves leak methane, and more than three-quarters of the emissions occurred when the stoves were off. Meanwhile, a 2023 study in Environmental Research Letters concluded that as little as 0.2% of gas leaking from the gas production and delivery system would make gas as bad as coal for the climate—and it turns out the leaks are worse than that. The EPA estimates that about 6.5 million metric tons of methane leak from the oil and gas supply chain each year—approximately 1% of total gas production—five times more than the 0.2% threshold.
In my town, gas accounts for 23% of global warming emissions, according to the district’s Department of Energy and the Environment. But gas emissions are likely much higher when accounting for leaks, which are widespread in the Washington metro area system.
Public health also hangs in the balance. Gas stoves, which are in 38% of U.S. households, not only emit methane, but also toxic pollutants besides NO2 that are associated with respiratory ailments and cancer. A 2022 study in Environmental Science and Technology detected more than 20 volatile organic compounds, including hexane, toluene, and benzene, in unburned stove gas.
In spite of all of the data, the American Gas Association (AGA), the industry’s leading trade group that represents more than 200 investor-owned gas utility companies and their suppliers, contends there is no problem. It maintains that gas stoves are a “minor source” of NO2 and dismisses the mounting evidence that gas stove emissions contribute to asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
Following the Disinformation Playbook
The gas utility industry, which won over the public with its cooking with gas campaign in the 1930s, found itself at a crossroads in the late 1960s when sales of electric ranges outpaced gas stove sales for the first time. In 1969, AGA launched a million-dollar advertising campaign (worth $8.45 million in today’s dollars) in response to recapture the market, which was especially critical given gas stoves function as a “gateway” appliance. If a new home has a gas stove installed, homeowners are more likely to buy other big-ticket gas appliances—a furnace, a water heater, a clothes dryer—which use a lot more gas than a stove.
Just a year later, however, the industry encountered a potentially major obstacle: A study conducted by the government’s National Air Pollution Control Administration found a link between outdoor NO2 exposure and childhood respiratory problems. The lead author of that study, Dr. Carl Shy—who spoke with NPR last fall for an article based on the CIC report—recalled that when he met with gas industry representatives after publishing the study, they conceded that gas stoves emit NO2 and that hood vents were not strong enough to remove it.
Shy’s study provided a shining example of the threat posed by industrial pollution that galvanized public attention in the late 1960s and led to the first Earth Day in April 1970. Given that heightened awareness, a Commerce Department advisory committee of electric and gas utility executives acknowledged at a meeting in the fall of 1970 that their industry needed “to show what they are doing about pollution [and] suggested that the gas industry take a look at the NOx [nitrogen oxides] problem.”
Since then, however, the gas industry—much like the oil industry—has cribbed heavily from the tobacco industry’s playbook to block government regulation by manufacturing doubt about the reality and seriousness of its “NOx problem.” Its main tactics include funding studies that magnify uncertainties in health research to create confusion about the science, running deceptive public relations campaigns, and creating front groups that spread disinformation to protect—and expand—the industry’s market share.
Attacking Critical Science
Since the 1970s, the gas industry has been commissioning epidemiological studies—whose authors often failed to disclose their funding source—that find no association between gas stove emissions and respiratory illness. As the CIC report describes in painstaking detail, these studies were designed to call into question the results of a growing number of studies that have discovered such a link. Many of the private labs and scientists the industry has commissioned, including Battelle Laboratories in the 1970s and the Arthur D. Little consulting firm in the 1980s, had previously done contract work for the tobacco industry for the very same purpose—to poke holes in studies that found that its products are hazardous by insisting that those findings were “inconclusive” or “invalid” and that more research was needed.
This gas industry tactic continues today. Just last year, AGA contracted with Gradient Corporation—a scientific consulting firm with a history of downplaying the health threat posed by toxic substances on behalf of its industry clients—to examine past studies that investigated the link between gas stoves and respiratory problems. Predictably, Gradient’s review, published last December in Global Epidemiology, concluded that the evidence presented in previous studies was insufficient.
Running Misleading PR Campaigns
Funding its own research is just one of the PR tactics the gas industry borrowed from the tobacco industry, the CIC report pointed out. Other tried-and-true tactics it appropriated include publicizing any information showing it in a positive light and disseminating the results of its research to legislators, regulators, journalists, health professionals, and other opinion leaders.
Where did the gas industry pick up the finer points of PR disinformation? From the very same firm that orchestrated Big Tobacco’s campaign in the 1950s and 1960s to sow doubt about the link between smoking and cancer: Hill & Knowlton.
Successful PR campaigns also require advertising, and the gas industry has spent generously. Its 1969 million-dollar ad campaign, for instance—called the “most ambitious advertising and marketing program [it has] ever undertaken”—featured commercials on the three television networks and ads in the top mass-circulation magazines of the day, including Life, Reader’s Digest and Better Homes & Gardens.
One Southwest Gas-funded TikTok spot featured an influencer in her kitchen parroting gas industry talking points while frying eggs on a gas stovetop.
In recent years, the gas utility industry has embraced social media to make its pitch. Working with Porter Novelli and other PR firms, AGA and its sister trade group, the American Public Gas Association (APGA), which represents municipally owned gas utilities, have been paying social media influencers hundreds of thousands of dollars to tout the benefits of gas stoves and other appliances in their posts.
Since May 2018, AGA also has spent more than $113,000 on 440 Facebook and Instagram ads. The Consumer Energy Alliance, whose 350 members include AGA and 78 other fossil fuel producers, suppliers, and trade associations, has spent considerably more. Disingenuously calling itself the “voice of the energy consumer,” the group paid more than $700,000 for some 2,300 Facebook and Instagram ads over the same time period. Last August and September, the group posted a series of ads warning that EPA efforts to rein in methane emissions may mean “higher costs for your household” and “unintended consequences for every American family.”
Gas utilities have likewise launched their own social media campaigns. Southwest Gas, for example, sponsors influencers on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to reach potential customers in Arizona, California, and Nevada, according to the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group that monitors the oil, gas, and utility industries. One Southwest Gas-funded TikTok spot featured an influencer in her kitchen parroting gas industry talking points while frying eggs on a gas stovetop. She then went on to rave about her gas clothes dryer and fireplace. The spot did not disclose who paid for it, but the influencer’s Instagram profile included a link to the Southwest Gas website.
Hiding Behind Front Groups
Some local governments across the country have responded to the climate crisis by changing their building codes to ban gas hookups in new homes and buildings. In 2019, Berkeley, California, became the first city to initiate such a ban, but a federal appeals court in San Francisco overturned a lower court decision in a case brought by the California Restaurant Association, ruling that federal energy efficiency standards preempt the ordinance.
Although Berkeley agreed to repeal its ban last month, nearly 100 cities and counties have passed similar ordinances, and another 35 cities and counties now require “electric readiness” so newly constructed buildings can easily switch to all-electric appliances. How the appeals court ruling will affect those initiatives is not clear.
Not surprisingly, AGA applauded the court decision, calling it a “huge step” toward helping the nation “continue on a path to achieving our energy and environmental goals.”
Besides getting a favorable ruling in what may prove to be a pivotal case, gas utilities have succeeded in lobbying legislators in at least 24 states to pass laws blocking cities and counties from banning or restricting new gas hookups. Likewise, they have been busy shoring up their markets. In addition to paying social media influencers to hawk gas appliances, gas utilities operating in 17 states have been offering builders cash and free vacations to install gas appliances in new homes, according to a December 2023 Guardian investigation.
At least partly in response to the Berkeley gas ban, gas utilities in more than a dozen states also have set up front groups to promote gas as “clean, reliable, and affordable,” denigrate renewable energy, and oppose gas bans and other climate solutions, the Energy and Policy Institute has reported. Southern California Gas Company, for instance, surreptitiously launched a phony grassroots group called Californians for Balanced Energy Solutions in 2019. New Jersey Gas, New Jersey Natural Gas, and the Newark-based Public Service Enterprise Group joined forces with local business associations to create Affordable Energy for New Jersey in 2020. And in 2022, Atmos Energy, Black Hills Energy, Summit Utilities, and Xcel Energy were among the founders of Coloradans for Energy Access.
Since May 2018, 15 of these state and regional front groups spent $3.6 million on more than 14,000 Facebook and Instagram ads. The top spender, Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, paid more than $1 million for some 2,000 ads. Founded in 2020 with a war chest of more than $10 million, its members include the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America; gas pipeline companies Kinder Morgan, TC Energy, and Williams Companies; liquefied natural gas exporter Cheniere Energy; and Southern Company, owner of gas utilities in Georgia, Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia.
The result of all this activity? Notwithstanding initiatives to ban new gas hookups, the industry’s 50-year disinformation campaign has thus far paid off. The federal government has yet to set a stringent standard for toxic gas stove emissions, and the percentage of new single-family homes across the country with an installed gas stove has jumped from less than 30% in the 1970s to nearly 50% in 2021.
Federal Agencies Fail to Protect the Public
The federal government has been aware of gas stove pollution issues for decades. Remember, that 1970 study identifying a link between outdoor NO2 exposure and respiratory problems in schoolchildren that so alarmed the gas industry was conducted by the National Air Pollution Control Administration, which predated the EPA. Throughout the following decades, epidemiologists worldwide continued to find an association between gas stove emissions and respiratory illnesses, as documented by the CIC report. In addition, some clinical trials examining the impact of NO2 on human volunteers under controlled conditions found pronounced increases in “airway resistance” even at low levels of NO2 exposure. Regardless, industry-funded studies have generated enough controversy over the conclusions of government and independent studies to hold regulators at bay. The EPA finally introduced a much-delayed one-hour exposure limit for outdoor NO2 in 2010, but there is still no comparable standard for indoor exposure.
The most recent attempt to address toxic gas stove emissions at the federal level came in January 2023, when Richard Trumka Jr., one of five members of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), touched off a firestorm of protest. He said his agency, which regulates dangerous household products, should consider banning new gas stoves, calling them “a hidden hazard.”
The blowback, mainly from Republicans on Capitol Hill, was immediate. “Democrats are coming for your kitchen appliances,” warned Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.
“I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove,” exclaimed Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician. “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands.”
What about the 47 million U.S. households (including mine) cooking with gas today? We can lower our health risk by opening our windows while cooking, using exhaust fans and air purifiers, and switching to electric kettles, pressure cookers, toaster ovens, and microwaves.
Two days later, CPSC Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric issued a statement clarifying the agency’s position, explaining that the agency is not planning a ban but is investigating ways to curb toxic stove-related emissions. In March 2023, Trumka followed through, issuing a “request for information” (RIF) on gas stove emissions and possible solutions, a potential first step in regulating the appliances. In the RIF announcement, he pointed out that it was “not the first time CPSC has considered the health effects of chronic exposure to emissions from home appliances, particularly nitrogen dioxide.” He listed five examples, from 1982 to 2017, when the agency took up the topic, but each time it refrained from issuing a gas stove regulation.
Supporters of CPSC taking action often cited the December 2022 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) study that found that 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the United States “is attributable to gas stove use.” In rebuttal, AGA and APGA cited a 2013 Lancet study investigating the association between different cooking fuels and childhood asthma in 47 countries. The study found that open fire cooking increased the prevalence of asthma, but failed to find an asthma link with gas.
However, according to a co-author of that Lancet study, environmental epidemiologist Bert Brunekreef, the study is an outlier. “You can always find a study that doesn’t find an effect,” he told E&E News in January 2023, “but you have to look at the combined effect of all the studies to reach a conclusion.” The way AGA cited it, he added, is “not a good use of our study.”
Brunekreef also pointed out that the December 2022 IJERPH study linking asthma to gas stoves is “entirely based on” a 2013 meta-analysis he co-authored that reviewed more than 40 research papers. It found that, in “children, gas cooking increases the risk of asthma and indoor NO2 increases the risk of current wheeze.”
Regardless, AGA sent CPSC a 97-page comment that dismissed Brunkreef’s 2013 meta-analysis and cited his anomalous 2013 Lancet study to bolster its argument.
By the time CPSC closed its comment period on gas stoves in May of last year, it had received more than 9,000 comments. About 30% of them were apparently generated by a template letter AGA promoted in ads on Facebook, according to the Energy and Policy Institute. The sample letter, the group said, cited Brunekreef ‘s 2013 Lancet study.
There is no way to gauge how much influence AGA’s campaign has had, but since last May, there has been no word from the agency. When contacted recently, a CPSC spokesperson said that “no regulatory action is planned, and any such action would require a vote by the full commission, which has not expressed support for any regulation.”
A federal agency did issue a new regulation for gas stoves recently, but it was the Department of Energy—not the CPSC—and it focused on reducing energy use, not toxic emissions.
In late January, the DOE—which is required by law to periodically update appliance efficiency standards—announced a relatively modest new energy-efficiency regulation for new gas and electric stoves. The standards, which will go into effect in 2028, will affect only 3% of gas stoves because 97% already meet them today. The standards will have a bigger impact on electric stoves. Nearly a quarter of them currently on the market would not be in compliance.
DOE projects that the standards will save Americans approximately $1.6 billion on their utility bills and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 4 million metric tons over 30 years, roughly equivalent to the combined annual emissions associated with 500,000 U.S. households’ combined energy consumption. But will the new standards appreciably reduce gas stove emissions of NO2, methane or volatile organic compounds? No.
The new standards for both gas and electric stoves will only cut an estimated 7,610 tons of NOx and 34,700 tons of methane over a 30-year period, according to a DOE spokesperson. Those estimates, he said, not only include “end use” emissions from cooking on a gas stove, but also emissions from the entire fuel cycle, from extracting fuel to generating electricity. The agency, he added, did not specifically calculate emission reductions for NO2 or volatile organic compounds.
So, it is still up to the CPSC, which has been investigating the threat posed by indoor NO2 emissions for more than 40 years, to follow the science and do something to ensure new gas stoves are safe. But what about the 47 million U.S. households (including mine) cooking with gas today? We can lower our health risk by opening our windows while cooking, using exhaust fans and air purifiers, and switching to electric kettles, pressure cookers, toaster ovens, and microwaves. Or, better yet, we can take advantage of government incentives and replace our gas stoves—and other gas appliances—with electric ones, which would protect our health and the climate at the same time.
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Gas Stoves Make for Toxic Roommates
A new campaign uses humor to tackle the toxic reality of so-called “natural” gas.
Mar 13, 2024
There’s nothing worse than a toxic roommate. But those of us with “natural” gas in our homes may be living with them without ever knowing it.
That’s why the Gas Leaks Project launched “Hot & Toxic,” a national campaign to inform consumers of the dangers of so-called “natural” gas. Using reality TV tropes to personify the 21 toxins emitted by gas stoves, one unsuspecting homeowner must face the reality that her dream home with a gas hookup is far from ideal.
At the Gas Leaks Project, our goal is to spread the word about the harms of “natural” gas and fight the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation machine. Hot & Toxic is our biggest effort yet to flip the script and alert people that no matter what the industry says, gas isn’t clean energy.
While costs prevent many of us from going all electric all at once, there are immediate and low-cost solutions that all consumers can take to stay safe and begin the transition off toxic gas products.
As part of the campaign, we’re asking the Consumer Product Safety Commission to require gas stove manufacturers and retailers to put appropriate warning labels on gas stoves. People deserve access to accurate health information so they can make an informed decision when buying their next stove.
The Hot & Toxic campaign joins a growing wave of creatives using comedy to tackle climate change and its associated health harms. It’s also an attempt to push back on decades of disinformation from the gas industry, particularly the American Gas Association (AGA), the industry’s primary political advocacy arm.
The AGA has come under increased scrutiny in the last year for its role in keeping Americans hooked on dirty and dangerous methane gas, including a decades-long history of using tobacco industry tactics to minimize the health threat of gas stoves, their efforts to undermine climate leaders at the local level, and their campaign to quietly pay social media influencers to promote gas stoves.
But it’s hard for them to dispute the hard science, and the growing body of research that ties gas stoves to dangerous health problems, especially among children.
The “natural” gas in household stoves and furnaces is mostly methane, a powerful climate pollutant that warms the atmosphere 80 times quicker than carbon dioxide. Methane leaks are an unavoidable part of producing gas and getting it to your home. From fracking sites to pipelines to storage facilities, research shows that methane is leaking constantly. When you add up all that methane, so-called “natural” gas may be as bad for the climate as coal.
But methane isn’t the only toxin you may be letting into your home. In 2022, Harvard researchers took air samples from Boston-area homes with gas stoves and found 21 different federally designated toxins. These included benzene, a dangerous carcinogen linked to leukemia and lymphoma; nitrogen dioxide, which harms your lungs and contributes to respiratory disease; and formaldehyde, a powerful lung and throat irritant.
Scientists with PSE Healthy Energy also found an array of toxins linked to birth defects and cognitive impairment in the kitchens of 159 homes serviced by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Gas (SoCalGas), and San Diego Gas and Electric. They found Benzene in 99% of the homes surveyed.
Shockingly, the health threat doesn’t even require turning your gas stove on. Researchers from Stanford University found that 80% of methane leaks from stoves occur when they’re turned off. They also noted that the stove’s age and model didn’t matter, as the team tested 18 brands of cooktops ranging from 3 to 30 years old.
While the recent studies are providing more detail on the harms of burning gas indoors, the data isn’t new. More than 50 studies dating back to the 1970s have linked the pollution from burning gas to asthma and respiratory disease in children. That’s why doctors and scientists at the American Medical Association, American Lung Association, and American Public Health Association have also spoken up about the health impacts of using gas stoves.
While costs prevent many of us from going all electric all at once, there are immediate and low-cost solutions that all consumers can take to stay safe and begin the transition off toxic gas products. For starters, you can open a window and use your vent fan when cooking to help disperse toxic air pollutants and circulate clean air. Or you can invest in a countertop induction cooktop, with entry level options starting at under $100.
When you decide to go all electric, you can use the Inflation Reduction Act to claim tax credits and rebates, including up to $840 for induction stoves, $8,000 for electric heat pumps, and $4,000 for electrical system upgrades in your home. Check out this home electrification planner from Rewiring America for more info. And remember: So-called “natural” gas is hot for the planet and toxic for your health, so anything you can do helps!
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House GOP Plan to Create 'Fake Hysteria' Over Gas Stoves Backfires
"An incredible embarrassment for the House Republican leadership," said one observer. "The morning McCarthy tries to turn the page, conservatives slap him and his leadership team in the face."
Jun 06, 2023
Progressive pundits on Tuesday derided what one commentator called a "complete shitshow" as a group of hard-right House Republicans voted with their Democratic colleagues in tanking GOP-backed bills to block regulation of gas stoves.
Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus joined Democrats in voting against a rule to advance four bills, two of them related to shielding gas stoves from federal regulation. Industry groups including the American Gas Association—which has known and tried to hide for decades that gas stoves can harm human health—support the legislation.
"Today, we took down the rule because we're frustrated at the way this place is operating," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told reporters, according to The Hill. "We took a stand in January to end the era of the imperial speakership. We're concerned that the fundamental commitments that allowed Kevin McCarthy to assume the speakership have been violated as a consequence of the debt limit deal."
While many progressives were infuriated by the deal struck between President Joe Biden and McCarthy (R-Calif.) to raise the nation's debt limit and avoid a first-ever default because the agreement helps protect wealth tax dodgers while slashing social safety net and climate spending, far-right Republicans also loathe the deal because they believe its belt-tightening measures are largely cosmetic.
"We warned them not to cut that deal without coming down and sit down and talk to us. So this is all about restoring a process that will fundamentally change things back to what was working," said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who also voted against advancing the gas stove bills.
In addition to Gaetz and Roy, the following Republicans voted to block the bills' advancement: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (La.) and Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Bob Good (Va.), Ralph Norman (S.C.), and Matt Rosendale (Mont.).
"Haha. Republicans don't even have the votes to advance their own bill creating fake hysteria around banning gas stoves—which no one is trying to do," tweeted Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett. "The House GOP majority hard at work on the issues that matter most!"
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NY Fossil Fuel Ban for New Construction Must Avoid Gas Industry 'Poison Pill', Coalition Says
Climate groups say Gov. Hochul and state lawmakers "must not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" by kneecapping "the law from the start."
Apr 28, 2023
A representative for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul indicated Friday that a deal to pass a state-wide ban on fossil fuel in new buildings will not include any provisions allowing local officials to veto the law, but a climate coalition urged advocates to maintain pressure to ensure the measure contains no "poison pills" to weaken it before applauding the deal.
"The new law will not have any loopholes that will undermine the intent of this measure," Katy Zielinski, a spokesperson for the Democratic governor, told The New York Times on Friday. "There will not be any option for municipalities to op out."
As long as the assurance proves true when the measure is passed as part of the state's $229 billion state budget in a vote that's expected next week, a majority of new buildings constructed in New York will be required to be outfitted for all-electric appliances such as heat pumps and induction stoves rather than furnaces, boilers, or water heaters that run on gas.
Climate group Food & Watch Watch (FWW) urged proponents to "keep the pressure on" lawmakers who will be hammering out the final details of the deal with Hochul in the coming days.
If passed, the law "will save New Yorkers money on energy bills, reduce climate-heating pollution, create jobs in clean energy, and reduce childhood asthma, a win-win for New Yorkers," said the Gas Free NY coalition, which includes Earthjustice, Food & Water Watch (FWW), New York Communities for Change, and NYPIRG. "It is also politically popular, with New Yorkers overwhelmingly in support."
A poll released by New Yorkers for Affordable Energy last month showed that 57% of New York residents support ending fossil fuels in new construction, and a study by the think tank Win Climate found that households would save between $904 and $3,000 per year if the state bans gas heating and cooking appliances.
The ban would go into effect in 2026 for buildings that are under seven stories and in 2029 for taller buildings—a delay that the climate coalition said would lock in "higher bills and decades of new pollution from the 40,000 new homes that are constructed each year until 2026."
The "handshake deal" reached between Hochul and lawmakers late Thursday still needs to be "fine-tuned" before the final budget vote, the governor told The New York Times. Hocul called the deal a "conceptual agreement."
Zielinski noted that certain buildings that need multiple backup power sources for emergencies, such as hospitals, will be exempt.
The gas industry has backed the proposal that Zielinski has said is not included in the deal, to allow municipalities to veto the provision.
Alex Beauchamp, Northeast director for FWW, told The Washington Post that the agreement reached Thursday, which brought New York one step closer to becoming the first state to ban gas in new buildings through a state law, was a "testament to the lasting power of the state's grassroots environmental movement."
"On the verge of a final agreement setting historic action into place, Gov. Hochul and the Legislature must not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by including the gas industry's poison pill provision that could kneecap the law from the start," said the coalition.
"New Yorkers are watching carefully to make sure the final budget includes real action and doesn't defer to the gas lobby," the groups added. "New Yorkers don't want a big announcement that turns out to be a sham. Taken on its face, this will be an enormous victory, but the devil is in the details."
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Industry Knew—and Hid—Dangers of Gas Stoves Over 50 Years Ago
"What? They knew? Next you're going to tell me that ExxonMobil knew about climate change and that the tobacco companies knew cigarettes caused cancer," one Democratic senator sarcastically said.
Mar 07, 2023
Newly uncovered documents published last week by DeSmog reveal that the leading gas industry trade group knew over 50 years ago that cooking with gas stoves could harm human health and tried to cover up the evidence.
The DeSmog revelations regarding the American Gas Associationn (AGA) came as the gas industry is pushing back against climate and public health advocates' efforts to ban new gas stoves amid mounting scientific evidence that the appliances threaten the warming planet and people's health.
Rrcent studies—which, among other things, showed that nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and ultrafine particles produced by gas stoves cause a range of health problems, including 1 in 8 U.S. cases of childhood asthma—sparked fast and furious backlash from the gas industry and its congressional boosters.
"It's less widely known that the gas industry has long sponsored its own research into the problem of indoor air pollution from gas stoves," wrote DeSmog's Rebecca John. "Now, newly discovered documents reveal that the American Gas Association was studying the health and indoor pollution risks from gas stoves as far back as the early 1970s—that they knew much more, at a far earlier date, than has been previously documented."
According to John:
More than 50 years ago, in 1972, AGA authored a draft report highlighting indoor air pollution concerns similar to those being raised by health experts and regulators today. In particular, this draft report examined what to do about problems related to the emission of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides (collectively referred to as NOx) from domestic gas appliances. This draft, recently discovered in the U.S. National Archives, would eventually become an official report published by the National Industrial Pollution Control Council (NIPCC), a long-forgotten government advisory council composed of the nation's most powerful industrialists.
However, an entire section detailing those concerns, entitled "Indoor Air Quality Control," vanished from the final report. With it went all the important evidence that the gas industry was not only conducting research into what the NIPCC called the "NOx problem" but also that it was actively testing technological solutions "for the purposes of limiting the levels of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in household air."
"Instead," John wrote, "the final report argued gas' sole drawback was its limited availability, 'not its environmental impact.' It also lobbied for a massive expansion of U.S. domestic gas reserves and the rapid rollout of gas-based infrastructure, under the banner of replacing coal with gas to stem air pollution."
Reacting to the DeSmog report, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) sardonically tweeted: "What? They knew? Next you're going to tell me that ExxonMobil knew about climate change and that the tobacco companies knew cigarettes caused cancer."
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Gas Pains and the GOP's War on More Healthy Stoves
The gas stove affair has quickly flared up into generalized appliance paranoia—all thanks to a crazed GOP that doesn't care a bit about public health or a greener future.
Feb 19, 2023
A Fox News headline writer called it “Biden’s War on Your Kitchen.” Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel wrote, “The reason gas stoves are in the news is simple: There is a coordinated, calculated—and well-funded—strategy to kill them off. It’s the joint enterprise of extremely powerful climate groups, working with Biden administration officials.” (“Extremely powerful climate groups”? Where can I find them?)
The Great Gas Stove Freakout of 2023 was not a strictly right-wing or one-party phenomenon. Panic spread along the spectrum, from liberal chefs to Florida governor Ron DeSantis. In the Senate, Republican Ted Cruz teamed up with Democrat Joe Manchin to sponsor a bill that would bar the government from enforcing any rule that prohibits the sale of gas stoves or even makes them more expensive.
Gas ranges, though, are widely associated with the urban foodie culture that the right loathes, and two-thirds of them are installed in blue states. Similarly, for home heating, the Washington Post notes that “gas dominates in densely populated states with Democratic governors, including Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey [while] electricity reigns in more rural states with Republican leaders, including Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina,” but that state governments in New York, California, and Washington are moving to phase out gas heating.
Despite the associations between blue politics and gas’s blue flame, the lion’s share of outrage over the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s warnings about the health hazards posed by gas stoves has come from MAGA world. And the stove affair quickly flared up into generalized appliance paranoia. Fox News, for one, warned that Uncle Sam is coming after your “water heaters, furnaces, clothes washers, dishwashers, ceiling fans, microwave ovens and shower heads” as well. (Ceiling fans? Huh?)
MAGA politics has also woven fossil-fueled rhetoric into much of its routine culture-war and hate messaging. Last month, the House Judiciary Committee Chair and notorious gasbag Jim Jordan tweeted, “First, they came for your guns. Then, your gas stoves. Then, your gas cars. What’s next?” It was a tasteless attempt to parody the poem First They Came, in which theologian Martin Niemöller lamented society’s early indifference toward Nazi genocide. Jordan augmented his tweet’s hate value by choosing to spit it out on January 27, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Gas pains
As the nation kicked off 2023 by arguing over home appliances, carbon continued to waft skyward at a dangerous rate. Greenhouse gas emissions increased by 1.3 percent in 2022. This means we’d need an abrupt U-turn to decrease emissions an average 5.3 percent per year between now and 2030, the Biden administration’s goal via the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA).
Emissions reductions that rapid would be wholly unprecedented (with the exception of the pandemic year 2020), and the IRA contains no surefire mechanism for achieving such cuts. With the House of Representatives now under MAGA control, the chances that Congress will pass any laws in the next two years to quickly and directly slash emissions have slid from very poor to zero.
GOP leaders insist nevertheless that they have plans to deal with climate in the 118th Congress. The energy and environment site E&E News reported in January, “In the coming months, Republicans intend to vote on a series of bills taking aim at existing federal regulations the GOP believes is stifling domestic clean energy production and innovation.” Sounds good, until it becomes clear that “clean energy” in this context translates as “fossil gas.”
The core of the GOP’s “Let America Build” strategy for “clean energy” is to expedite permits for extracting, distributing, and exporting gas, while taking a wrecking ball to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (which is, in E&E’s words, “a bedrock environmental protection law sacrosanct to many Democrats”).
“Let America Build” claims to “make it easier to produce energy and innovate in America,” and that, it says, should apply “just as equally to oil and gas as it does to renewables and other innovative technologies.” The fossil fuel industry and its representatives in Congress say they just want a level playing field—oh, and a little more imperialism as well. E&E reports, “House Republicans are also emphatic that the United States should focus on forcing other countries to use clean energy”—remember, that’s fossil gas—“and reduce their emissions rather than cutting off [US] domestic production.” Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia elaborated, telling E&E, “What we need to do is be addressing these Third World countries and developing countries and what they’re doing.”
Such policy positions grow out of the tight bonds between MAGA politicians and the world of fossil fuels. Among the top GOP campaign donors are companies such as Koch Industries and Energy Transfer Inc. (of Dakota Access Pipeline infamy), according to the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). The broader MAGA universe draws similar nourishment from oil and gas wells. IPS found that the Koch Charitable Foundation, for instance, supports a fund called Donors Trust that donates generously to climate denial, misinformation, and hate groups.
Target proxy pollution
With Congress in a straitjacket on climate, the Biden administration reportedly aims to do as much as possible through executive action and sheer persuasion. A Supreme Court ruling last summer complicated things, however, by restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to directly limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Nevertheless, as the Washington Post reports, the Court’s decision made clear that the EPA
still has the power under parts of the Clean Air Act to limit conventional pollutants from operations directly on-site at these plants. And environmental groups have pushed the agency to use a wave of updates under long-established rules that would reduce that pollution, but also likely lower greenhouse gas emissions as a by-product, in addition to creating a new rule that targets power-plant greenhouse-gas emissions directly. EPA Administrator Michael Regan signaled last year he planned to do just that.
So the administration plans to make use of environmental protection laws that were not written for the purpose of mitigating climate change but could achieve at least some greenhouse gas reduction as a side effect. For example, in January, the EPA proposed to strengthen rules for reducing soot emissions, which endanger public health. Such a move would probably have beneficial effects on climate as well. A Democratic lobbyist told the Post, “All these things are about carbon emissions. But [the EPA] will never say it’s about carbon emissions. This is the smart approach. The Supreme Court may not like it, but there’s nothing they’ll be able to do about it.”
Such strategies may allow for end runs around the Supreme Court, but if the GOP takes the White House and/or both houses of Congress in next year’s elections, many executive actions will be reversed, and many IRA climate provisions will be attacked. That’s no reason not to take the actions, though. No one knows what 2024 will bring. And going after local pollution, whether or not it’s used as a proxy for climate damage, can advance environmental justice in marginalized communities. That brings us back to the administration’s push to phase out gas stoves.
The stove campaign is aimed at improving indoor air quality and health, but if successful, it will also reduce emissions of methane, the powerful greenhouse gas that is the chief component of fossil gas. Rebates to low- and middle-income households for replacing gas appliances with electric ones, including stoves, are a welcome feature of the IRA; however, many low-income families, including those that rent their homes, are unlikely to benefit. More broadly, ensuring environmental justice and protecting human health while keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere cannot be accomplished one household at a time. That requires action at the community and state levels as well.
For more than a year, Extinction Rebellion DC (XRDC) has run a campaign to thwart the plans of fossil gas provider Washington Gas to completely replace the city’s old, decrepit gas-piping infrastructure, at a cost of $5 billion. Instead, XRDC says, spending should go toward subsidizing the replacement of gas appliances with electric ones in the district’s many low-income homes, and ditching gas. Today—and far into the future, if the piping system is replaced—the city’s residents, 46 percent of them Black, are exposed to toxic methane and nitrogen dioxide fumes, with serious health consequences, especially for children. At the same time, the entire leaky Washington Gas system releases world-warming methane into the atmosphere.
XRDC activist Liz Karosick told me last year that some people had questioned the group’s choice of issues, asking questions like, “Hey, fossil fuels are a global problem, much bigger than a local gas campaign. Why this issue?” But building momentum behind local demands, Karosick believes, could “change the trajectory, electrify the city. . . . We’re finding leverage points where we can access the people who have decision-making power and move public opinion.” Then, she said, “we can go back to expanding upon broader demands.”
The political landscape: still steep and rocky
In its plans for emissions cuts, the Biden administration is primarily targeting the electric power sector, aiming to eliminate coal- and gas-fired power plants by 2035. That would be an impressive feat, but it cannot be achieved solely through executive action. And it wouldn’t address our energy system as a whole. Only 25 percent of US greenhouse gases are emitted by the power sector, and phasing out the remaining emissions from transportation, manufacturing, cargo hauling, farming, road and building construction, and other sources will be much, much harder.
Only Congress can effectively address fossil fuels throughout the economy, and passage of laws for doing so won’t be possible until 2025 at the earliest. But even if the GOP takes an electoral drubbing in 2024, passage of the kind of sweeping, ambitious legislation required to effect a rapid phaseout of oil, gas, and coal (see Larry Edwards’ and my Cap and Adapt policy framework) would face fierce resistance from powers that be in government and business.
A year ago, academics, journalists, and political figures were raising alarms over the possibility that in the 2022 and 2024 elections, MAGA forces could either win or cheat their way into full control over both houses of Congress, plus the White House, and not let go. On climate and broader ecological emergencies, I feared (among myriad other horrors) that autocratic extremists would then be in a position to block and bury federal climate policy for at least the next decade or more, ensuring that world-altering emissions would continue being pumped into the atmosphere.
Last fall’s elections made that outcome somewhat less likely but far from impossible. Now we are seeing how fanatics who have only the most tenuous control over a single chamber of the legislative branch can nonetheless hamstring an entire government—as long as they don’t care about lawmaking or governing, only about bringing down those who do. The apogee of this fanaticism will occur in a few months when the MAGA mob leverages the lifting of the debt ceiling to advance its interests and further increase its power.
Whatever it is that closes off our paths toward phasing out fossil fuels—a collapse triggered by the debt-ceiling extortion, stepped-up sabotage of government functioning, or some fresh catastrophe—the arena for climate action will probably be shifting even further into the hands of grassroots groups and communities like Extinction Rebellion, Start:Empowerment, the Great Plains Action Society (and the broader campaign against fossil carbon pipelines), the Poor People’s Campaign, the Indigenous Environmental Network, the Los Angeles Bus Riders’ Union, and many others.
In pursuing on-the-ground action, though, we must not ignore the threat that antidemocratic, power-hungry public officials in Washington and state capitals pose to our collective future. On that, I’ll turn to journalist Annika Brockschmidt for the last word:
So while the urge to laugh is understandable when Ted Cruz proposes doomsday scenarios—“First gas stoves, then your coffee, now they’re gunning for your Xbox” [in response to greater energy efficiency in gaming devices]—let’s not lose sight of what this latest outrage is meant to facilitate: to turn any cultural change, however small, into a story of victimization. This is the powerful driving force behind the Right’s grievances, and it provides them with permission to “hit back” as a form of “defense.” . . . By framing change or progress as an existential threat, the Right creates a siege mentality which is essential to the victimization narrative—no easy thing to do if your movement is experiencing a good deal of success (see the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives, despite the sizable disadvantage in popular support). It also galvanizes the anger of the base, which serves as a powerful motivator, and strengthens their own sense of having an imaginary target on their backs. All in all it’s fine to laugh about the Right’s unhinged crusade against gas stoves. Just don’t miss the strategy behind it—and the fact that sometimes a gas stove is not just a gas stove.
The original version of this article was published by City Lights Books as part of their ‘In Real Time’ series.
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To Defend Gas Stoves, Industry Calls in the Tobacco Propagandists
The issue of polluting gas stoves is currently raging in the U.S. and represents a growing public relations crisis for the industry.
Feb 08, 2023
We have known for decades that both the tobacco and fossil fuel industry have used scientists to defend their products and spread doubt and confusion over the health and environmental impact of smoking or burning oil and gas.
Both industries peddle a deadly product. Both have used the same playbook to conjure uncertainty and, in the words of the ground-breaking book written by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, be the merchants of doubt.
A central tenet of this strategy has been the so-called “third party technique,” where a distrusted or discredited industry buys credibility by using someone to speak on their behalf. It is no surprise that the fossil fuel and tobacco puppet masters have used scientists as one group of third parties to spin science on their behalf.
One now infamous project by tobacco giant Philip Morris was the “Whitecoat Project”, where scientists would help “resist and roll back smoking restrictions” but also “restore the social acceptability of smoking.” Hence paid-for scientists have been named white-coats.
One white-coat who has worked for both the oil and gas industry and the tobacco industry is Dr. Julie Goodman, an epidemiologist and board-certified toxicologist, from the consultancy Gradient (see picture).
Gradient says it is a U.S.-based risk consultancy science firm “committed to excellence in scientific analysis on complex environmental, health, and safety issues.” Goodman’s clients have included the American Petroleum Institute, American Chemistry Council, and Philip Morris, among many others.
Dr. Goodman is the subject of a recent highly revealing New York Times expose by Hiroko Tabuchi outlining how the scientist is helping front the gas industry’s pushback against the growing evidence of how harmful gas stoves can be to health.
The issue of polluting gas stoves is currently raging in the U.S. and represents a growing public relations crisis for the industry. Hardly a day now goes by without another story showing how polluting gas stoves can affect health.
For example, yesterday, the results of a study from the Bronx were released where households with electric ovens showed a 35% decrease in daily concentrations of the pollutant nitrogen dioxide and a nearly 43% difference in daily concentrations of carbon monoxide, compared to gas stoves.
The issue also became more prevalent after a peer-reviewed article in the international journal of Environmental Research and Public Health was published last December. This concluded, “12.7% of current childhood asthma nationwide is attributed to gas stove use, which is similar to the childhood asthma burden attributed to secondhand smoke.”
Responding to this, the gas industry spin doctors, the American Gas Association, (AGA) issued a press release trying to argue that the research was “not substantiated by sound science.”
Walking into this polarized debate has been Dr. Goodman. As she has done before, her job appears to be to downplay the health risks for her clients. To spread the doubt. To create uncertainty.
As Tabuchi reports: “When Multnomah County in Oregon convened a recent public hearing on the health hazards posed by pollution from gas stoves, a toxicologist named Julie Goodman was the first to testify.”
Dr Goodman said that “studies linking gas stoves to childhood asthma, which have prompted talk of gas-stove bans in recent weeks and months, were ‘missing important context.’”
However, the New York Times reports that “what Dr. Goodman didn’t tell the crowd was that she was paid to testify by a local gas provider.” The Times added that in recent months, Dr. Goodman had also been working with the spin doctors at the American Gas Association, to help it “counter health concerns linked to gas.”
Indeed, back in August 2022, Dr. Goodman wrote a letter that the current evidence did not “provide a reliable scientific basis…to make causal inferences regarding the relationship between the use of gas-fired residential cooking appliances and childhood asthma.”
Sentences like this should set the alarm bells going. Years ago, I wrote a report on the tobacco industry’s decades of denial. Having studied thousands of documents, I wrote that the industry statements are peppered with fudging comments such as “no clinical evidence,” “no substantial evidence,” “no laboratory proof,” “unresolved,” and “still open.” Nothing has been “statistically proven,” “scientifically proven,” “or “scientifically established.” There is no “scientific causality,” “conclusive proof,” or “scientific proof.”
The industry was buying time, as thousands died from their deadly product. As one tobacco scientist conceded: “a demand for scientific proof is always a formula for inaction and delay and usually the first reaction of the guilty.”
But Gradient and Goodman have a history of controversial research and of playing down the health risks. As Tabuchi outlined: “Gradient has a track record of working on behalf of its clients to push back against research on health risks associated with a range of products.”
Goodman has, for example, acted as an expert witness for Philip Morris, when Judge Edward Leibensperger from the Massachusetts Superior Court said Gradient’s analysis “was shown to be inconsistent and contrary to the consensus of the scientific community.”
Documents from the tobacco archive also show Dr. Goodman co-authored an article sponsored by the now-defunct American Plastics Council, criticizing dozens of academic studies that had raised concerns over the controversial chemical Bisphenol-A , or BPA, which is an endocrine disruptor and linked to reduced fertility, and behavioral problems in children as well as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.
The New York Times article is not the first time Goodman and Gradient have been under the spotlight either. In 2016, the Centre for Public Integrity published a series entitled: “Science for Sale,” outlining how “industry-backed research has exploded — often with the aim of obscuring the truth — as government-funded science dwindles”.
Some of the “white-coats” in the article were employed by Gradient, including Dr. Goodman. The Centre outlined how one “group of academic researchers were so outraged by an article on BPA written by Gradient’s Julie Goodman and Lorenz Rhomberg that they wrote a lengthy response with a table listing all the “false statements” in it.
Frederick vom Saal, a University of Missouri professor who has investigated BPA for more than two decades, told the Centre that “In this article, there is nothing that is true. It’s ridiculous. And that’s how they operate.”
Goodman’s colleague, Peter Valberg, was also exposed for promoting the idea from a lawyer who defended asbestos claims that maybe tobacco smoke was the cause of higher rates of mesothelioma, not asbestos, despite decades of evidence to the contrary. He went on to testify in a court proceeding to that effect too. The Tobacco document archives also show that Valberg appeared as an expert witness for Philip Morris using research from Goodman.
Scientist after scientist approached by the Centre criticized Goodman and Gradient. One scientist, Bert Brunekreef, director of the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences at Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands, said that “Mrs. Goodman and the company she works for have a reputation of misrepresenting the science consistently.” Another, Bruce Lanphear, a Simon Fraser University Professor, added “They truly are the epitome of rented white coats”.
Undeterred, Goodman and Gradient will carry on representing their corporate clients. Yesterday, Goodman was due to testify before California’s Bay Area Air Quality Management District, appearing on behalf of the Western States Petroleum Association, a fossil fuel industry lobby group.
Meanwhile the AGA is trying to argue that concern about gas stoves is all one conspiracy by green groups and has nothing to do with peer-reviewed science. The diversionary messaging could have come straight from a spin doctor for the tobacco industry:
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