When I saw New York was going to ban gas stoves, my immediate thought was – damn, it’s CCA all over again. Making a complicated story very short – someone discovered that chromated copper arsenate (CCA)-treated playground equipment had leached arsenic into a playground, so a preservative treatment in use since the 1930s was effectively banned from all residential construction applications. As folks in this industry will recall, that CCA ban created a whole new set of problems in finding suitable alternatives, a.k.a. something that would work effectively without corroding the fasteners! Yes, for this anecdotal tale, I am omitting many details. Sure, if you do a Google search today, you’ll find statements such as “The EPA was concerned about risks to workers in wood-treatment facilities and residues on the skin,” but 20 years ago that’s not what got people upset and led to “manufacturers voluntarily discontinuing manufacturing chromated arsenicals-treated wood products for homeowner uses” in December 2003.
Facts and Frenzy
Yes, it is a fact that some arsenic leached somewhere at some point, but it was the emotional connection, those children on playgrounds, that kept the ball rolling. How many people had to struggle to find a suitable alternative? Would there be data? Would there be risks? What about the safety of construction with less reliable materials? Could anyone hear those concerns in the din?
Gas “vs.” Electric
I admit that I have yelled at my screen – “Where do you think electricity comes from!?!” So, I looked it up. In New York State, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “Natural gas, nuclear power, and hydroelectricity together have provided more than nine-tenths of New York State’s utility-scale (1 megawatt and larger) electricity net generation since 2012. … In 2021, natural gas fueled 46% of New York’s utility-scale in-state generation.” That says to me, owners of future homes will not be able to have gas stoves, gas furnaces, gas clothes dryers, or gas water heaters…but the electricity that runs their electric appliances has a 40/60 chance of coming from gas. At #2 on the list, nuclear power produced roughly 25% of the state’s electricity in 2021, but no one is worried about its environmental risks anymore. Nope, we’ll just decide that all electricity is clean energy, we’ll make believe that all future cars will be powered by the sun and the wind, that petroleum will be as easy to phase out as coal, and that none of these decisions will have serious negative consequences that will have to be addressed by someone at some point.
The moral of my story: beware of arguments framed with loud voices. They may have catchy emotional stories to tell, but they may ignore details and context. Sometimes, the loudest voice has the least to say.