It’s the latest in a flood of research showing a sane society would be phasing out fossil fuels for our own health, even without all the climate chaos.
When they’re cooking, gas stoves release fumes of nitrogen dioxide, benzene, carbon monoxide and other nasties into your home. Some experts liken it to living with a smoker. At the same time, burning gas spews carbon into the sky. And even when they’re turned off, they keep leaking methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
“It’s not just a climate or a health concern. But it’s both at the same time,” says Eric Lebel, senior scientist at PSE Healthy Energy.
Doctors are pressing governments to take action and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment has prompted the federal Competition Bureau to investigate greenwashing claims by Canadian Gas Association (CGA) that gas is “clean.”
The fossil fuel industry has hooked its pipelines into our homes and buildings and it’s been hard at work insinuating itself with our governments as well. You can almost hear the gaseous hiss behind Health Canada’s efforts to address the issue — use range hoods on high, the agency recommends, and most impotently, only “use the back burners.”
The fossil fuel industry is reacting to the flood of new research just as you might expect, having witnessed so many decades of campaigns attacking messengers, casting doubt on science, capturing governments and inflaming the culture wars.
Industry must be particularly worried because the stove studies are getting play, not only in general media, but increasingly in foodie outlets like Bon Appétit Magazine where celebrity chefs swoon over alternatives like electric induction.
Worse yet, Canada’s favourite dorky dad is on the range.
Even Consumer Reports is on the case. CR built an insulated chamber with a range hood and ventilation fan to test gas stoves and compared its readings to guidelines set by Health Canada and the World Health Organizaton.
The upshot was published in bold type: “If you’re getting a new range, consider electric.”
“They not only don’t emit potentially harmful gases,” says Consumer Reports, “but, contrary to popular opinion, they can cook more quickly. New induction ranges, which use electromagnetic pulses to heat, offer about three times the efficiency of gas.” CR refers readers to the recent U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which provides credits up to $840 for a new electric stove.
Culture warriors are trying to bring the situation to a boil and all the tired tropes are out. This week, Texas congressman Ronny Jackson declared: “If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!”
AOC (Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) produced one of her classic — if not entirely constructive — ripostes: “Did you know that ongoing exposure to NO2 from gas stoves is linked to reduced cognitive performance?”
Congressman Jackson was responding to news the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is preparing to take action. “Any option is on the table,” said one member of the commission, who described gas stoves as a “hidden hazard.”
The flareup got so out-of-control that the White House felt the need to clarify that “any option” did not actually include armed agents prying gas burners from the hands of dead congresspeople.
New York’s governor hasn’t been cowed. Gov. Kathy Hochul just proposed the first state-wide ban on natural gas hookups in all new buildings. The plan means new buildings across the state could no longer have gas (or oil) burners for heat or hot water, nor for stoves.
The announcement comes a month after New York City became the biggest municipality in the U.S. to ban gas hookups to new buildings.
The focus on stoves befuddles some climate nerds, who point out (quite correctly) that much more gas is burned for heating than cooking. The furnace or hot water heater are also hidden health hazards and a much bigger climate concern.
But normal people have a personal connection to their stove they don’t have to the furnace in the basement. And we have a visceral reaction to fumes poisoning children in the kitchen. So, gas stoves can be a gateway to increase climate literacy. That’s what we’re seeing in New York where public attention led to broad public policy on fossil fuels for any use in buildings.
Similar to vehicles, stoves can clarify the main cause of climate change — fossil fuels. And they give people a mental model of the solution pathway — electrification.
Whether it’s gasoline in the car or gas in the home, these controversies act as everyday examples, microcosms for the complex dynamics behind climate chaos.
I do find it puzzling that there’s so much emphasis on induction stoves from the health and climate crowd. Induction is more efficient than conventional electric stoves: five to 10 per cent more. And induction is undoubtedly cool — the magic of magnets heats your pots and pans directly.
But the focus on induction stoves also plays into the culture war narrative of elites wanting everyone to buy more expensive products. And, in this case, possibly new pots and pans as well. Unlike electric vehicles that had to be developed from scratch, electric stoves have been around a very long time.
Induction might be important for convincing serious chefs. But it’s nice to have issues where there are plenty of low-carbon options on Craigslist.
Brace for 2023: Hansen
When James Hansen talks, we really should listen. Hansen's testimony to the U.S. Congress in 1988 is one of the great “what ifs” of climate change history. (What if we’d listened? What if Big Oil hadn’t responded with obfuscation and lies? What if we’d been weaning off fossil fuels since 1988?)
Hansen has some unnerving predictions for 2023. All the heat domes, prolonged droughts and flooded countries of the past few years might seem bad enough, but we’re actually being spared the true effects of fossil fuel-burning by the Earth itself — an unusual, multi-year La Niña — and by our own unintentional geoengineering experiment — pumping massive amounts of sulphur into the sky from coal plants and other smokestacks, notably on container ships.
That aerosol pollution actually reflects sunlight and cools the Earth. In fact, it’s basically the “geoengineering” process some scientists think we’ll need to manage the damage we’re doing with the emissions cuts we’re not making.
The long La Niña is likely to break in 2023 and Hansen and Co. also predict payment coming due on our “Faustian bargain” with sulphur.
“2023 should be notably warmer than 2022 and global temperature in 2024 is likely to reach +1.4-1.5°C, as our first Faustian payment … is due.”
“The first payment of humanity’s Faustian aerosol bargain is now due,” says Hansen. “The first payment seems to be ~0.15°C. Like Dr. Faustus, who was hauled off screaming by Mephistopheles, we have no choice: we are going to make this payment, which together with the El Nino warming will likely take global temperature to +1.4-1.5°C in 2024 relative to 1880-1920.”
The Roundup
No ‘just transition’ for Danielle Smith
Alberta’s new premier is trying — really, really trying — to pick a fight with the feds. Danielle Smith has announced she will defend Albertans’ freedom to use plastic straws and their freedom from electric vehicles. This week, it was freedom from a “Just Transition” for workers.
Natasha Bulowski reports the federal government intends to make good this year on its 2019 promise of legislation, although the feds have been backing away from “just transition” language.
“The term ‘just transition’ plays very well with environmentally concerned voters, but that ‘T-word’ — transition — is acknowledging the reality … that certain sectors are going to see decline,” said Kathryn Harrison, a climate policy researcher and professor of political science. “That's the point that we've been in denial about.”
Big Oil at the trough
Pop quiz: Which group lobbied more than HealthCareCan in April 2020 as the COVID pandemic swept the country? Full points if you guessed CAPP, the trade association for Canada’s oil and gas industry. (HealthCareCan represents hospitals and health organizations.)
“From 2009 to 2019, CAPP’s in-house lobbyists averaged 117 meetings per year. That figure more than doubled to reach an all-time high of 269 meetings in 2020 — more meetings than business days in the year.”
Those are some of the findings from a joint investigation into oil industry lobbying by the Investigative Journalism Foundation and Canada’s National Observer.
And Big Oil lobbyists didn’t leave empty-handed. They secured $2.6 billion for their companies over the past 11 years.
The investigation tallied the haul of the 11 biggest oil and gas companies in the federal lobbying registry. You’d expect a spike during the pandemic because of the federal wage subsidy given to companies in all sectors. But “even after factoring out CRA funds, the amount of public money … surged, more than doubling from 2019 to 2021, the data shows.
“Funding levels were high during the years when Stephen Harper was prime minister, reaching a maximum of $285.6 million in 2013. They dipped by more than half in 2016 after the Trudeau Liberals were elected, the data shows.
“Now they are once again on the rise. In the past two years alone, excluding CRA funds, the number of tax dollars funnelled to the oil and gas companies we studied leapt from $69.7 million in 2019 to nearly $177 million in 2021 for projects as varied as carbon capture technology, abandoned well cleanup and supporting Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore oil industry.”
Oil company CEO to lead UN climate talks
The United Arab Emirates announced Sultan Al Jaber will be president of this year’s climate summit, COP28, in Dubai.
Sultan Al Jaber is the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., which extracts about four million barrels of oil per day. He’s been a climate envoy for the United Arab Emirates and also serves as chairman of the government-owned renewable energy company, Masdar.
Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, called the announcement “an unprecedented and alarming conflict of interest.”
Elizabeth May described her “horror at the whole situation” in an interview with Natasha Bulowski. “It's unfortunate that we're meeting in the United Arab Emirates, just to be blunt.” Over 600 fossil fuel lobbyists descended on the most recent COP in Egypt.
Exxon knew. They really, really knew
A study published in Science this week shows that Exxon’s in-house scientists hadn’t just been predicting global warming since the 1970s, they did so with remarkable precision. (Exxon largely operates as Imperial Oil in Canada.) In defiance of its own science, the company launched a PR campaign to manufacture doubt, even going so far as to claim we were headed into an ice age.
Other oil companies joined in, as did trade associations, utilities and car companies like GM and Ford. Those disinformation campaigns are now exhibits in a profusion of climate lawsuits. In the new study, Geoffrey Supran, Stefan Rahmstorf and Naomi Oreskes analyzed decades of climate modelling predictions by Exxon scientists between 1977 and 2003:
“Their projections were also consistent with, and at least as skilful as, those of independent academic and government models. Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp. also correctly rejected the prospect of a coming ice age, accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected, and reasonably estimated the “carbon budget” for holding warming below 2 C. On each of these points, however, the company’s public statements about climate science contradicted its own scientific data.”
Donkin coal mine
You can only imagine what it must be like for the workers leaving Cape Breton to burrow under the Atlantic in the only subsea coal mine left in the world. Worse yet, the Donkin mine had a series of roof cave-ins — it was eventually closed down for two years.
The Donkin coal mine only reopened in September and has already “received 14 warnings, 19 compliance orders and eight administrative penalties between mid-September 2022 and Jan. 5.”
The numbers are “ridiculous” says Gary Taje, a retired underground miner and longtime representative at United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). “The company hasn't learned anything.”
Electric school buses for London
A shoutout to Langs Bus Lines, which runs about 400 school buses in London, Ont. — the company has begun replacing the first half of its fleet with electric buses built by Quebec’s Lion Electric. The first e-buses picked up students as they returned to school in the new year.
Physician for the future
Meet Dr. Kevin Liang, a busy 28-year-old family doctor dividing his time between his practice, advocating against fossil fuel pollution and reducing health-care’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The interview is the latest in Patricia Lane’s series on young Canadian climate leaders.
“I came here with my family from Taiwan when I was nine and grew up in Delta, B.C. Like so many immigrant families, we had an ethic of care. It seemed natural to me to extend that to the more than human world around me,” says Dr. Liang.
Dr. Kevin Liang in Inuvik. Photo by Fey Villacampa
Concrete and changing the game
I couldn’t decide which bon bon to leave you with this week, so I’ll give you two.
If you’re in the mood for a long read that epitomizes how fascinating any subject can be, check out Concrete Built The Modern World. Now It’s Destroying It. You might not think you’re up for 5,800 words about concrete, but Joe Zadeh will prove you wrong.
And Rebecca Solnit has a new piece out, so, of course, that’s hard to pass up: ‘If you win the popular imagination, you change the game’: why we need new stories on climate
“We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change. Some are habits of mind, some are industry propaganda. Sometimes, the situation has changed but the stories haven’t, and people follow the old versions, like outdated maps, into dead ends.”
That’s all for this week. Thank you for reading Zero Carbon. Please forward it along and always feel free to write with feedback or suggestions at [email protected].
Support for this issue of Zero Carbon came from The McConnell and Trottier foundations and I-SEA.