James Morrow: The greenie war on gas is coming to your kitchen

Progressives who claim to want choice in everything are suddenly determined to force Australians to use expensive induction cooktops - whether they like it or not, writes James Morrow.

One of the strangest things to happen over the past 40 years has been the way the same people who once demanded the government get out of their bedrooms are now calling for the state to come and push its way into our kitchens.

At issue: The seemingly innocent gas cooktop, which for decades has been the technology of choice for countless home cooks who like its responsiveness, precision, and the fact that it is perfect for doing those cool cheffy flips with their pans.

Yet seemingly out of nowhere, it has now become an article of faith on the left that gas (once considered a clean-ish transition fuel on our way to a renewable energy utopia) is dirty, foul, and sinful.

And thus armed with a handful of studies, many of dubious merit, progressives have decided that gas cooktops are giving kids asthma, heating the planet, and need to be banned or at least phased out as soon as possible.

In the US, a mooted ban on gas cooktops became such a hot issue last week – pun intended – that the White House had to intervene.

Dr. Jill Biden wife of President Joe Biden, posted a photo of herself cooking using a gas stove on Twitter. Her husband had to shut down a proposed ban on gas cooktops recently.

Richard Trumka Jr, the unelected American consumer safety commissioner who first suggested the ban, was quite explicit on the subject.

“This is a hidden hazard,” he told Bloomberg, unleashing a political and media firestorm.

“Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

A deadly six-burner assault stove.

Of course, were safety really the issue, Trumka would probably want to look at banning electric cooktops instead.

According to a study by the US-based National Fire Protection Association, “Households that use electric ranges have a higher risk of cooking fires and associated losses than those using gas ranges.”

“Although 60 percent of households cook with electricity, four out of five (80 percent) ranges or cooktops involved in reported cooking fires were powered by electricity,” the group reported.

Never mind that.

Thai cook Palisa Anderson is part of a campaign encouraging Aussies to switch to electric cooking in the home. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Once the word came down, scores of Democrat politicians and progressive media commentators fell into line to support the idea while simultaneously taking a world-weary tone to suggest that the fight over gas stoves was just a fake culture war dreamed up by conservatives.

This was a level of gaslighting big enough to have a carbon footprint equivalent to putting two million diesel 4WDs on the road.

And while Americans were able to push back on this lunacy because Trumka gave them a single point of resistance, here the effort to take away the choice of how we cook is more diffuse.

World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab. Picture: Fabrice Coffrini

In Australia this anti-choice meddling is being driven by a seemingly disparate grab bag of groups teaming up to decide how you re-heat your spag bol, fire up your Wednesday night stir fry, or sear your date night scallops.

In Victoria, Greens-controlled councils have been working to ban new gas connections and last year the party tried to get legislation up banning new hook-ups from 2025.

Over the past couple of years the academic website The Conversation published a series of articles amplifying and giving cover to the idea that gas cooktops are a domestic menace.

And last November the ABC dutifully trumpeted the work of something called the “Global Cooksafe Coalition”, made up of the unlikely union of “chefs, doctors, climate scientists, and real estate developers.”

Vegetable steamer on a gas hob. This sight could be a thing of the past if activists get their way.

Seriously, if the presence of the notoriously generous and community minded property development sector in this whole thing doesn’t ring alarm bells I don’t know what will.

Avoiding the need to install a network of gas pipes in their builds means more money in their pockets (you didn’t think the savings would be passed on to you, dear buyer?) and also means they can push their line that high rises somehow tread more lightly on the earth than detached family homes.

But what is crucial to note is that in both the US and Australia the supposedly sudden push to change the way we cook has actually been in the works for some time.

In 2019, for example, organisers of a closed door conference in New York State paid for scientists from advocacy groups from across the country to meet and strategise bans on natural gas across the country.

It is also worth noting that the World Economic Forum, whose cartoon villain chief Klaus Schwab calls for a “great reset” of the global economy, and which promotes the idea that in the future you will own nothing and be happy, has been heavily involved in putting out the talking points against gas.

The WEF-associated Rocky Mountain Institute put out one of the earliest studies on gas as an indoor pollutant four years ago, co-authored with advocacy groups like Mothers Out Front and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

And if you look at the website for the Global Cooksafe Coalition, it turns out one of its partners is the WEF’s World Green Building Council.

Of course, all this may be a theoretical question anyway.

With the Albanese government seemingly determined, whether by choice or by accident, to chase the gas industry out of Australia, we may not get much say in the matter anyway.