Today, Explained - The half-baked gas stove debate

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

No, the government isn’t coming for your gas stove. Vox’s Rebecca Leber explains why you might want to switch anyway. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited and fact-checked by Matt Collette and Amina Al-Sadi, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Check one, two. Recently, tall, colorblind Today Explained producer Miles Bryan leapt into the culture wars when he purchased an induction stove to replace his gas stove. That is correct. It's an induction stove. And then set about interviewing his contractor, Rafael Magana. How familiar are you with how they work? There is the first one like this. You do a ton of kitchens, right? I mean, that's...

Yeah, basically it's my sportive and I the first one, like this. You do a ton of kitchens, right? I mean, that's... Yeah, basically, it's my sportive, and I never saw one of these before. The reason Rafael is unfamiliar is that this is a newly popular, though not new, technology, and also the natural gas lobby has spent lots of money over the years trying to keep people like Miles hooked on gas. But a consumer protection official recently took aim

at gas stoves and sparked a conversation, nay, ignited a firestorm, even kindled a conflagration about what gas stoves are doing to our health. That's coming up on Today Explained. The ring of fire. The ring of fire. BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season.

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If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. And that sound you just heard is, yes, a gas stove. A gas stove uses natural gas to cook. So before you turn on that blue flame, there is pure methane that is coming out of the stove.

And then when it clicks on for fire, you are also getting some other pollutants mixed in, like nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. Rebecca Lieber is a senior climate reporter at Vox. Those pollutants are something that a lot of people have only recently started paying attention to, even though gas stoves have been a fixture in some American homes and apartments for a very long time. They've been around about a century, but their market share has changed quite a bit

over time because earlier in the 1900s, it was competing with electric stoves, but also coal and wood stoves. There's no doubt about it. Modern matchless gas ranges make you a better cook and help you automatically do better meals. But over time, they have gained a lot of the share of the market. And today it's about 38 percent of homes that use a gas stove. Four out of 10. Are there certain parts of the country where gas stoves are more popular? Yeah, it completely depends on where you live. So gas is really common in big cities along the coast. So New York City is hugely reliant on gas cooking. So is a lot of California.

And then you see these pockets that tend to be in big urban centers. As far as electric goes, the southeast is super electric, up to 90% in some states. So it can really depend on where you live in the country. Tell us why we're talking about gas stoves all of a sudden. Yeah, so it seems like all of a sudden because this really blew up in the last week or so. But there's been this long debate before it about the health risks of a gas stove and whether we still should use gas in our buildings. But what happened in the last week was the Consumer Product Safety Commission had said it was going to look at gas stoves as a public health risk and consider regulation around the gas stove.

And part of that statement from Richard Trumka Jr. said that anything is on the table, including a ban. Well, we're in the information-gathering stage, and we want to get that feedback from the public. We want to get that feedback from, you know, scientifically available data out there, and we're going to analyze that and figure out

the best path going forward. And when we're at that point in regulation, everything's on the table. And that led to a predictable freakout, particularly from conservatives. Congressman Ronny Jackson, a Republican, he says, quote, if the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold, dead hands. You know, when we say don't tread on Florida or let us alone, we mean that including on your gas stoves.

The government should not be telling us how to cook our food. alone. We mean that, including on your gas stoves. The government should not be telling us how to cook our food. Yeah, what's next? Scented candles? I mean, you know, the Americans... Well, not scented candles. Pets. If you really want to do something about asthma, ban pets. Oh, that's terrible. No, you're not going to ban pets. Not an air watch. There is no ban. No one is coming for your gas stove. There likely will not be a ban in the near term future.

The chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission clarifying today, quote, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so. But this is the culmination of this longer debate. And I think just a lot of national audience was encountering it for the very first time. What is the problem with gas stoves? So the gas stove is natural gas. It runs on a fossil fuel, which is methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that's far more potent than carbon dioxide, especially over the short run. So it's really problematic from a climate perspective. But there are also these other pollutants when you burn methane, like nitrogen dioxide,

which we know from a wealth of research is linked to respiratory problems and cardiovascular problems. And we know that from studying this pollutant in the outdoors, but indoors has been a bit more of a black box until recently. These are oxides of nitrogen or NOx that get released into our homes when we use gas to cook. Nitrogen dioxide is a concern because we know that it does have adverse effects on respiratory tract, respiratory illnesses, especially for sensitive individuals such as children who could have asthma, as well as elderly people who also suffer from asthma. I can imagine some pushback saying, sure, if you've got the stove on 24 hours a day, it's a problem, but not if you use it to make coffee in the morning and quickly heat up some dinner in the evening. Yeah, this is where it gets interesting because everyone's using their stove and their oven in

very different ways. So certainly the more you use it, the bigger a problem it can be. But there's some other factors here to consider. There's been some research finding that the gas stove can actually pollute even when it's turned off. And that's because methane leaks are really common whenever you have pipes because it finds a way to leak out. And there was a study out in California that found that methane was actually coming from people's stoves even when they were turned off. So that's one thing to consider. Another is the space you're in. So if you are in this large ventilated space, you likely have less to worry about as far as nitrogen dioxide goes because you're breathing less of it in. But when you're talking about tight, cramped spaces that don't have any ventilation, then you're probably breathing

a lot more of that NO2 coming off that stove. How long have we known about these problems with gas stoves? Yeah, this is something that scientists have known about for decades. And going back to the 1980s, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and EPA were actually looking at the science and saying, hey, there might be a risk here. Maybe we should regulate this. For one reason or another, they didn't. And I think the public really wasn't aware of the science that continued to build up until the last couple years when climate activists really started to look at buildings as a area to focus on. And that's when a lot more of this research started coming to light, including some really high-profile studies recently, one that linked stoves to substantial amount of childhood asthma in the U.S.

And NO2 is very well established as a pollutant we should worry about. It's something the EPA regulates when it comes to the outside, but indoors it somehow has escaped notice. And I think as consumers, this was just an issue that wasn't on people's radars. And honestly, while I've been reporting on this for a few years now, I talked to a lot of people who didn't know about that science until the last week. I suspect that there is part of this backlash that is not just about culture wars. It has to do with how some people feel about their gas stoves versus how other people in different parts of the country perhaps view natural gas and fossil fuels. Can you talk a bit about that dynamic?

The gas stove is the status symbol in the kitchen. I think it's gained this culture of prominence as a superior way to cook. In fact, I've reported on how the gas industry has paid influencers to show off their gas cooking. Since 2018, influencers and social media stars have been paid to post hundreds of times about the benefits of hashtag cooking with gas, a practice that has a long documented history of wreaking havoc on human health. But public and private utility... It's bigger than the gas stove, and it's bigger than the kitchen. It's about these other fights we've been having. And the gas industry itself is pretty concerned here. What are they concerned about? Well, the gas stove isn't a huge profit margin for the industry, but it's certainly important from an emotional factor.

This is something that people feel strongly about. And if you are hooked up to gas in your kitchen, you're more likely to be hooked up in other ways. So the big profit margins are gas boilers and gas heaters. And if you're hooked up to gas in your kitchen, you are likely hooked up with other appliances. And that's where the gas industry makes a lot of its money from. So the future of the gas stove is kind of tied up with the fate of the natural gas industry itself. So you see, and I've reported on lots of emails from inside the industry, from campaigns the American Gas Association has been waging, that the gas stove is a really pivotal and important wedge issue for the industry where they're trying to gain ground and forestall climate action. How is the fossil fuel industry

fighting back when someone like Richard Trumka Jr. says, huh, guys, we got to reconsider this? Yeah, I think Trumka Jr. really stepped into this ongoing battle and the gas industry won't and isn't holding back here. We've already seen this play out on the local and statewide scale where they have been waging these massive PR campaigns around the stove and why electrification is bad. They have consultants who have been showing up to public hearings to dispute the science around the health risks. And there's this tobacco-like strategy going on. And the industry has been clear it will not take this lying down. And it already has pushed these laws in lots of red states where they have placed a ban on gas bans. These are called preemption laws, and those have already been enacted in at least 20 states. So at the federal level, we're going to just see this magnified. This is a battle for the industry's future.

And as a result of all of the blowback that came through, has the Consumer Product Safety Commission changed its tune? Has it said, God, we didn't realize we were starting a war? Yeah, they've changed their tune quite a bit. The Biden administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission have made clear there is no ban in the works. They have walked back those statements entirely. And the CPSC said they would hold public hearings to look at this issue for the first time. And along the way, it's going to have to consider public input and the gas industry pushback as well. So this isn't going to be a regulation out of nowhere. This is likely years away. And we're just at the start of that process. All the CPSC said is they're going to

have public hearings this spring. Today, where food is finest, it's cooked with gas. No one's coming to take away your gas stove. We're talking about a longer horizon of having to transition the building sector to clean energy, but we're not talking about a longer horizon of having to transition the building sector to clean energy, but we're not talking about losing gas cooking, even in the foreseeable future. So if you have that stove, you can keep cooking on it. Coming up, the story that the gas lobby sold us and the pitched fight to get gas out of our homes. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket.

Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. Thank you. R-A-M-P dot com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves? Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or

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Cooking with gas. We all cook better when we're cooking with gas. Cooking with gas. We all cook better when we're cooking with gas. It's a combination of carbon and hydrogen, CH4. We also call it methane. And increasingly, sorry, I'm in a laundry room. Apologies. We're electrifying our house right now. And so there's a lot of construction going on.

Leah Stokes is a professor at UC Santa Barbara, where she works on climate and clean energy policy. She also hosts a climate-themed podcast called A Matter of Degrees. Continuing along, I will start again. So what is so-called natural gas? Why do we even call it natural gas? Well, it's actually a combination of carbon and hydrogen, right? CH4, four hydrogen molecules and one carbon molecule. And we also call it fossil gas increasingly, or methane, because, you know, the natural gas branding

is to sort of make it sound more harmless and warm and fuzzy, when actually this is a pretty potent greenhouse gas, and it's not the kind of thing you want to be breathing in. And increasingly, the climate movement is trying to rebrand this gas. Why do we call it natural gas? I am now teaching an energy policy class, as I usually do, and I've updated my slides to say fossil gas or methane rather than saying natural gas. So how long have we been using natural gas, maybe unnatural gas? How long have we been using it in our homes? For a long time, for many decades. But scientists have been warning us for over 30 years now that actually there's a dark side to this, that gas stoves are emitting chemicals into our home that can really pose health hazards. In the last three decades, have Americans generally tried to stop using natural gas in our

homes with the scientific warning in mind? I don't think that most people had any sense that using a gas stove was bad for their health. I did not. Yeah, no, I mean, most people didn't. I went to give testimony at Congress, and I was talking about electrification, and I mentioned some new research. It actually hadn't even been published yet, but I had talked to the researchers. It's since been published in a peer reviewed journal. And it's that even when your gas stove is turned off, it can be leaking, leaking gas into your home. Even when a gas stove or other gas appliance is turned off, it is still leaking. And that gas contains carcinogens like benzene, which cause cancer. And when you're cooking with the gas, you're also releasing nitrous oxides as well as formaldehyde. You've

probably heard of formaldehyde before. Also a carcinogen, also bad for your health. It's a combustion byproduct. Thankfully, we've got the solutions to remove pollution from our homes. We can use electric technologies like induction stoves and heat pumps. Clean electricity combined with electrification could cut three quarters of our carbon pollution. So, you know, when I gave that testimony, my sisters watched it and they both said they were scared of their gas stove and they wanted to get rid of it. My younger sister, she has health challenges and she did. She got a beautiful induction range and got rid of a quite expensive gas stove, actually. So I think more and more people, they just didn't know about this. They didn't make that connection. And there's a reason why people didn't make the connection. The gas

industry has been marketing to us and hoodwinking the American people to think that this is better and you should want it when actually it's making you sick. I am very sympathetic to people who have been misinformed, which is why the whole Republican versus Democrat making you sick. I am very sympathetic to people who have been misinformed, which is why the whole Republican versus Democrat debate, I think I am less in tune with it because if a person has been lied to and believes a thing, you're not going to get them to easily change their mind and say, hey, let me switch over to electric or to an induction stove. But policymakers can decide to stop natural gas. Could a city say no new buildings are going to have natural gas hookups, guys?

It's going to be electricity or induction. We're not doing gas. Has that happened? Could it happen? I mean, it already is happening all over the country. So there's more than 50 cities in California that have said no new gas and new construction. That happened in my city of Santa Barbara. And interestingly, the gas industry launched a big campaign happened in my city of Santa Barbara. And interestingly,

the gas industry launched a big campaign to try to block it from passing. And basically, they texted hundreds, if not thousands of people in my community lying to them, saying that, you know, the government was going to take away their gas stove. The exact same thing we're seeing in this moment. It's not true. The government was not taking away anybody's gas stove. And so the city council got all these letters from people being like, how could you take away my gas stove? And the city council, thankfully, didn't fall for this astroturfing, fake grassroots BS. They said, no, we aren't going to put gas in new construction. And they passed that rule. So that rule now exists in New York City as well. So if you're building a new building in New York City, you can't put gas in it. And so really, let's start with the low-hanging fruit. Let's say

for building new stuff, let's not put poisonous, climate-warming, terrible stuff in those buildings. And then for people who have gas stoves, no one's taking it from you, except maybe yourself. Maybe you're going to start looking at your gas stove a little differently. I know I had that experience. You know, I'm currently electrifying my house, so I'm cooking on induction and we're going to be fully electrified, no more gas. But because we were renovating it, we had to live in an Airbnb for a couple months. And I have infant twins. They're like a year and a half. And the gas stove in this Airbnb was super sketchy. And it had one of those vents that's like in the ceiling, not at all near the range. And it was like one of those ones you put in your bathroom. It was not

really like up to code. So every time we cooked, you know, we had Thanksgiving in this place. You know, we cooked meals for our kids. But every single time I just thought, oh my gosh, like I have my kids in the same room because it was all open concept and I'm burning something that I know is going to irritate their lungs and it's going to put up pollution levels in this room really high. And we could barely open the door because we have a cat and couldn't get the cat to go outside. So it's just like stressful. So I'm really excited to live in a home where I don't have to think

about whether or not I'm causing asthma for my kids. And, you know, they were born premature. They don't have super robust lungs. And a lot of people, you know, are probably scared about what are they doing to their children just by trying to cook them dinner. Nobody wants to do something like that. And the good news is there's a great alternative. It's called induction. What is induction? Well, induction is a modern electric technology. It's like cooking with magnets, we say. Rather than cooking with gas, our new slogan could be cooking with electricity or cooking with magnets. I bought an induction stove last year and I am never going back to gas. This thing heats up stupid fast, faster than gas. Maybe a little too fast. Okay, yeah, don't heat an empty pan and then add oil to it, I guess. Well, that's what the fan is for. It's very efficient,

super fast, very precise, great technology. A lot of people, if you say electric stoves, are going to think about those old sketchy coils. I'm not telling you to get a sketchy coil, okay? That's not what's happening here. Instead, I'm saying maybe get an induction stove. And a lot of people might not have heard of this, but they're really common in Europe. They're increasingly common in the United States. And it's a really fast way to heat up the pan. Rather than just wasting a lot of energy into the air and creating a lot of pollution, you just directly transfer electricity to a pan by basically vibrating

metals in the pan. So you've got to have like iron in the pan so that it vibrates along with the electricity. That's basically the idea. Chefs increasingly love induction because they realize it's way more precise. I love cooking on induction, whether it's at home or in a restaurant. You know, as a chef, we've used induction in restaurants for a long time. It's because you get such a precise result. You're in total control as the cook. You can really dictate exactly where that heat is at when you're cooking. You get beautiful caramelization. If you want it to be this temperature, you can get it to exactly that temperature. And you don't have a side of pollution with your dinner.

Do you think we have hit an inflection point in the fight over natural gas? Absolutely. I mean, I think the gas industry played this kind of poorly. This may not be the perfect way for us to have this conversation, right, if we were going to design this to educate the American people. But climate advocates have kind of been having that perfect conversation alone for years now. But now when you have 3,600 stories about gas stoves in a week,

even if some of them are negative or about the culture wars or whatever, that is massive communication. The EPA has found that natural gas stoves emit air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide and are linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, and other health conditions. Okay, that's not great, but counterpoint, gas stoves are also linked to delicious pan-seared scallops. A little butter bath. A little come on, baby.

I mean, when Colbert is talking about it, people start learning about the pollution in the heart of their homes. And they can't unlearn that. They can't unsee that. And I think that we have planted a seed that is going to grow into a very big tree. And I know that because already on Twitter, people are posting pictures of gas stoves out on the curb in their neighborhood. So some people are taking this news pretty hard and pretty fast and already starting to ditch their gas stoves out on the curb in their neighborhood. So some people are taking this news pretty hard and pretty fast and already starting to ditch their gas stoves. That was Leah Stokes.

She teaches at UC Santa Barbara and co-hosts the climate podcast, A Matter of Degrees. Earlier, we talked to Rebecca Lieber, who's a senior climate reporter at Fox. Today's episode was produced by Avishai Artsy. It was edited and fact-checked by Matthew Collette and Amina El-Sadi Lieber, who's a senior climate reporter at Fox. Today's episode was produced by Avishai Artsy. It was edited and fact-checked by Matthew Collette and Amina El-Sadi and engineered by Paul Robert Mouncey. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you