Big Tent Ideas

BEN LIEBERMAN: Biden Admin’s Gas Stove Crusade Is Just A Preview Of What’s To Come

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Ben Lieberman Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Font Size:

It was an amazing media 180. Just days after a wave of stories about the threat to asthmatic children from natural gas stoves and the deliberations underway at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to restrict or ban them, came a second wave of coverage insisting the Biden administration wasn’t targeting gas stoves and blaming Republicans for scare tactics.

In between, of course, was a powerful public backlash against the idea of Washington micromanaging our kitchens in this manner. But the threat to gas stoves is very real and is far from the only regulatory attack on home appliances. (RELATED: DEROY MURDOCK: A Modest Proposal On Where Democrat Tyrants Can Stick Their Gas Stove Bans)

If only it were just stoves, and just CPSC. In reality, Biden’s regulators across several agencies are pursuing costly and intrusive red tape for a lot of things that fire up or plug in around the house, and all in the name of fighting climate change.

The war on gas stoves is part of the larger climate-inspired war on natural gas use in general. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, thus climate activists in and out of the administration want to end its residential use in favor of electrifying everything. Furnaces are another home appliance that, like stoves, come in both natural gas and electric versions.

A proposed Department of Energy (DOE) efficiency standard for gas furnaces quite arguably has less to do with efficiency and more to do with saddling natural gas versions with disadvantages relative to electric. A not-yet-released proposed rule for water heaters may also try to tilt the balance away from gas and towards electric.

Much as public health was CPSC’s ostensible reason for pursuing what really was climate policy on stoves — it was acting on a handful of very recent studies raising alarms while ignoring others that found no health threat from gas stoves — energy efficiency is just the stated reason for DOE pursuing climate aims by targeting gas appliances.

And incidentally, DOE has also proposed a new efficiency standard for stoves. It bears keeping an eye on this rule making to ensure that it is fuel neutral. After all, the agency has declared climate change its top priority.

Even non-natural gas appliances are under the gun. The Environmental Protection Agency seems to hate air conditioners — other than the ones that cool the agency’s massive offices on hot DC summer days. Its latest proposed rule for residential systems would raise the cost of new home air conditioners by requiring that only climate-friendly refrigerants be used in them.

Note also that the Biden administration has already dealt the regulatory death blow to incandescent light bulbs, and did so claiming climate change benefits. That one is too late to reverse, but others can still be stopped or at least made less bad.

As we saw with stoves, homeowners want to make appliance choices for themselves rather than have them made in Washington. And they certainly don’t like paying more for appliances, both the up-front purchase price and operating costs — even DOE is on record that gas is considerably cheaper than electricity on a per unit energy basis.

Let’s hope we see more consumer backlashes, administration reversals and media flip flops like we just had on gas stoves as these and other equally-questionable appliance measures make their way through the federal bureaucracy.

Ben Lieberman is a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel