Trumka isn’t a chef — he’s a Democratic appointee to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and he kicked off the “kerfuffle” Douglas wrote to me about by telling Bloomberg News he thinks the CPSC should consider prohibiting the sale of new residential gas stoves, on the grounds that they have dangerous effects on indoor air quality.
This doesn’t mean the federal government is about to ban gas stoves or even that the CPSC is about to try. Alex Hoehn-Saric, the chair of the CPSC and also a Democratic appointee, has said (somewhat irritatedly) that he is not looking to ban gas stoves and that the CPSC has no proceeding to do so. Democrats in Congress who have issues with gas stoves have generally been pushing for new rules rather than bans: safety disclosures, and requirements about emission levels or ventilation that are designed to improve indoor air quality; such rules might add cost and therefore discourage gas stove installations at the margin, but they wouldn’t ban the products outright.
But a number of local jurisdictions, including New York City, have imposed rules in recent years that prohibit gas hookups in new construction buildings. These policies are motivated by concerns about indoor air quality and carbon emissions, and they mean that whether you’ll be allowed to buy and install a gas range is a live political question, at least in certain places.
[I’ll add this from Barro’s Twitter feed about the gaslighting that’s going on — Ed]
One of the Democratic appointees to the CPSC said the commission should consider banning them, and a variety of local jurisdictions (including New York City) have banned gas hookups in new buildings. I don't know where people came around to the idea that Republicans made this up. https://t.co/j55IoUVZAa
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) January 12, 2023
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