My New York City apartment doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s 700 square feet. The master bedroom fits little more than a queen-sized bed. There’s no kitchen pantry. My baby son sleeps in a large closet. But I’m a cook, and it does have at least one thing that keeps me renewing the lease year after year: a four-burner gas stove.
Gas ranges allow cooks a greater degree of control over heat, from which flavor and texture result. But for the next generation of New York cooks, that feature will be even more of a rarity.
Starting this year, gas stove hookups will be banned in newly constructed buildings under seven stories throughout the five boroughs. The 90-year-old brownstone I live in, which was renovated and divided into four units in 2019, will be grandfathered in. Starting in 2027, this regulation will also apply to taller buildings. Inspired by city regulators, state lawmakers passed a similar ban in May. Now, New Yorkers who like high-heat and precise temperature control will be out of luck regardless of whether they live in Buffalo or Bushwick.
Over on the Left Coast, Berkeley adopted a similar ban in 2019, which was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals this April. More than 50 other California cities, from Los Angeles to Sacramento, have adopted copycat regulations over the last five years which are now in legal limbo. Then in January, the feds got on board: Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard L. Trumka Jr. called gas stoves “a hidden hazard” and made noises about possibly banning them, saying—ominously, to libertarian ears—”products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
Under the guise of environmentalism, big government types keep coming for our kitchens—from gas stoves to dishwashers. Even our pizza ovens are under siege.
It’s the same story every time, with endless permutations: Environmentalists pick a product to ban, use questionable evidence to justify their onslaught or misunderstand how people’s behavior will shift if their tools are made worse, and leave the rest of us to suffer the consequences—peppering our lives with additional low-grade annoyances.
Hellbound and Down 