| | | | | Welcome! 👋🏼 This week, disarming the gas-stove war, your clunker-appliance questions, and introducing the official Climate Coach mascot. 🐕 | |  | | If you've enlisted in the recent gas-stove culture wars, I've got good news: You can lay down your arms. The latest skirmish in America's culture wars is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about what drives the vast majority of people to adopt new technologies. | | Trench warfare erupted between climate advocates and conservatives on social media after a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission declared gas stoves posed a "hidden hazard" and floated the idea of a ban on new sales. Conservatives immediately hit back: "You'll have to pry it from my COLD DEAD HANDS!" tweeted one congressman, a gas stove's blue flames flickering in the background. | | The drama is high, but the reality is that how Americans cook in the future will be shaped gradually by more mundane, steady efforts, by both manufacturers and government, to make a more efficient product, rather than by Twitter flare-ups. "These technologies live or die based on costs or performance," says Alex Trembath at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental think tank. | | The incandescent lightbulb aisle, too, was once the scene of fierce battles. Michele Bachmann, a Republican former congresswoman from Minnesota, declared in 2011 "the government has no business telling an individual what kind of lightbulb to buy." It never did. The real reason we have much more energy-efficient lightbulbs? Dialing up standards under Title III, Part B(1) of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act's 42 U.S.C. 6291-6309. | | If I bored you to tears with that last sentence, that's the point. Technology shifts for appliances happen by escalating regulatory standards that force manufacturers to make more efficient, better products (see: LEDs). Beyond the early adopters, culture-war battles don't motivate most people to buy or discard an appliance. | | Right now, price and familiarity are the main obstacles for electric induction stoves, the commonly cited alternative to a gas stove. Entry-level models run about $1,000 on average, more than double the cost of gas stoves. | | But once government agencies get back to the dull business of writing stricter standards, prices will fall, performance will rise and buyers will seek out a new (better) product. | |  | | Collected insights as we explore how to adapt to a changing planet. | | How do you build an underwater parking garage that can hold 7,000 bikes? Watch a time lapse of how it's done at Amsterdam's main train station. | | | Week by week, we will highlight the ways in which the Biden administration is reshaping the nation's environmental policies. | | The Agriculture Department on Wednesday restored protections for more than half of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, safeguarding one of the world's largest intact temperate rainforests from new roads and logging. The Trump administration had stripped away a ban on new roads on roughly 9.3 million acres of "America's Amazon" in 2020. | |  | | Each week, we'll ask your opinions and answer questions about living lighter on the planet. | | Sending perfectly good appliances to the landfill is a bad idea. But experts say nursing an aging appliance well beyond its expected lifetime isn't helpful either. You're better off getting a new, more efficient machine. Just make sure you buy an Energy Star-rated appliance (find products and rebates here) and recycle the old machine. Appliance installers will usually take them, or you can find local recycling firms and take-back programs here. | |  | | From The Post: Arizona is turning off the tap for an entire community, the latest example of how an epic drought is remaking the West. A curious seal and a wayward robot dove deep under the Antarctic ice … and discovered the potential for a massive sea level rise that could remake the world's coastlines. Meet six GOP leaders who are shaping Republicans' response to climate change — and what that means for President Biden's agenda. Sacramento, a city of a million trees, saw extensive damage to its urban canopy during recent storms. Now it's replanting for a hotter, drier and stormier climate. | | From elsewhere: MIT Tech Review shares the good news: Peak emissions are in sight as economies generate more with less carbon. Scientists studied 5,000-year-old skeletons for clues of how they adapted to climate change, Grist reports. They learned nimble, cooperative societies fared best. | |  | | Thanks for joining me for the Climate Coach newsletter. Every Thursday, we'll end with a photo. This week, my dog Miska, who proved that our most efficient dishwashers can't beat a determined husky — even if she ignored my advice not to pre-rinse dishes. | | | See you again Tuesday, Michael Coren, Climate Coach | | | | | | | | | |
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