Another Republican Preemptive–and Dangerous–Culture War Topic
Conservative media recently injected a new cause for fear and anger into the mix of culture war themes to rile their followers. Those evil Democrats are preparing jack-booted enforcers to stomp into your kitchen and remove your gas stove! Be angry. Stand up for your personal freedom in the face of this grave threat!
This flare-up of Republican culture war hysteria started with a January 9th headline in Bloomberg News, “US Safety Agency to Consider Ban on Gas Stoves Amid Health Fears”. All the Republican propaganda machine needed to see was the word “Ban”—and they leapt on it as the newest, shiniest outrage. Even pseudo-Democrat Joe Manchin got on board, issuing this tweet:
Does Manchin’s tweet remind you of the NRA’s “You can have my gun when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands”? It should. It’s the same framing—and for the same rhetorical purpose: be angry over something no one is proposing.
Fox News, on January 17, published “First, Biden came for your gas stove. Next, Democrats will come for your gas heater”. Look! It’s Joe Biden invading your kitchen! The first link in the Fox article (purporting to reference the origin of the outrage of the “ban”) takes the reader to an ever-growing list of articles on a Fox News web page with the heading “REGULATION”, a page clearly dedicated to the Republican mantra that all good things arise from a totally unfettered “free market”. The day I clicked on the link the article at the top of the REGULATION page was a Fox News video featuring Tucker Carlson, a video that offers the real source of the gas stove hysteria: fossil fuel company worries that regulation will restrict the market for natural gas. Tucker smirks his way through a misinformation-packed monologue in which he asserts that “Climate is now our state religion”.
Despite the headline of the Bloomberg News article that triggered this latest frenzy, the article itself, more carefully read, is nuanced (in contrast to the Fox article). Even the subtitle of the Bloomberg article belies the word “Ban”: “The US Consumer Product Safety Commission will move to regulate gas stoves as new research links them to childhood asthma.”
All this exaggeration and misrepresentation by Republican media and talking heads is meant to get out ahead of the narrative. Make an outrageous statement right out of the gate and force those with the truth to play catchup with refutations—negative statements that repeat the original accusation and thereby reinforce the original outrage. Remember the old saw, “A Lie Is Halfway Round the World Before the Truth Has Got Its Boots On”?
This lie of the gas stove Gestapo coming to get your appliances is ideal to feed the siege mentality of people trained to believe that the government under Democrats is out to get them, that they are about to have their autonomy and freedom taken away. And it’s a twofer: Importantly, the lie frames the continued burning of natural gas, a carbon-based fossil fuel, as a sacred right not to be violated.
The broader narrative is the Republican sell-out to the fossil fuel companies defending profits those companies don’t want to lose. Remember the disinformation pumped out by the tobacco companies trying to counter incontrovertible evidence that tobacco causes a lot of cancer, lung and heart disease, and a myriad of other ailments? Sadly, it worked on some of us. I didn’t quit smoking for twenty years after the evidence was out. I won’t be fooled a second time by an industry trying to protect its profits. Incidentally, smirking Tucker is still busy framing pollution of other people’s air with cigar smoke as a freedom issue. (Ah, the good ‘ole days of smoke-filled rooms!)
Libertarian/Republican framing of smoking as a “freedom” issue delayed adoption of rules that ultimately freed us from second hand smoke and reduced the societal temptation to use tobacco. Millions of people suffered and died thanks to the tobacco industry’s delaying propaganda. Today far fewer people smoke than in my youth and far fewer people suffer the consequences of smoking—thanks to regulation—and yet tobacco is still legally available and tobacco companies still exist. Was the engineering of the tobacco companies’ economic “soft landing” worth the death and disability the delay produced?
Future generations will look back on Republican, Fox News, and fossil fuel industry gas-stove hysteria through the same lens as most of us now see the delaying tactics of tobacco companies. How many will suffer dislocation, starvation, disability, and death as a result of this fossil fuel industry rear-guard battle for the minds of citizens and voters?
It’s not just words. It’s legislative action at the behest of fossil fuel companies—twenty states have enacted Republican sponsored legislation that preempts municipalities from prohibiting gas infrastructure piped to new construction. No municipality is proposing to come rip out existing infrastructure or remove your gas stove—but many have tried to take the logical step of NOT setting up new buildings to burn fossil fuels. When you realize you’re digging yourself into a hole, the first rule is to quit digging. Gas infrastructure is costly to install, costly to safely maintain, and, once installed, encourages continued use—the burning of ever more carbon fuels that exacerbate world weather events.
These battles over building codes, though fundamentally important, are “under the radar” for most of us—but not for the most ardent of climate deniers. In October, 2021, a proposal to limit new natural gas hookups in the City of Spokane was floated by the City’s volunteer Sustainability Action Subcommittee as part of their draft Sustainability Action Plan. The natural gas new hookup prohibition was stripped out before the rest of the plan came to a vote in the City Council, thanks to the concerted effort of a vocal few.
Fortunately, the prohibition of new gas hookups (under certain circumstances) is now, at least in Washington State, part of the state building code. One can nearly guarantee that if this were a state with a Republican trifecta (House, Senate, and Governor) this change wouldn’t have happened—or if it did it would have been legislated away by Republicans.
Scratch the surface of any of the people dedicated to waging this new “save your appliances” culture war and you’ll find someone with a vested interest in keeping fossil fuels on the menu—or a person who, often based in Fundamentalist Christian doctrine, believes that burning carbon fuels is a non-problem—or both. For example, right on cue, the Spokesman, on January 23rd, published a “Guest Opinion” entitled “Federal gas stove ban fails, but appliances under threat in state,” penned by two men, Larry Andrews and Garth Selden, both with a vested interest in carbon fuels. Andrews is the owner of Andrews Mechanical Inc., a company of excellence in the installation and maintenance of natural gas powered heating equipment. Mr. Selden is the “third-generation owner/president of Country Homes Power.” Whether it was Andrews and Selden or the Spokesman editor who picked the title, that title frames the “they’re coming for your appliances” lie at the local level.
We need to understand this fossil fuel company tactic and call it out for the lie that it is.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry