I have been arguing for some time now that we’ve reached the point in human history where we should stop setting stuff on fire: coal, oil, biomass, or in this case the “natural gas” that’s found on cookstoves across the country. The most important reason is because all that combustion is cooking the planet—but a new study published this week reminded us all of another huge virtue. It found that 13% of childhood asthma in the country can be attributed to kids living in houses with gas stoves. That’s 650,000 kids—20 Fenway Parks worth of wheezing young people. “It’s like having car exhaust in a home,” Brady Seals, a co-author of the research, told the Washington Post. “And we know that children are some of the people spending the most time at home, along with the elderly.” This isn’t the first study to come up with similar findings. Earlier efforts found that children in households with gas stoves were 42% more likely to come down with asthma. And of course the effect is magnified in poorer households, which are smaller and less likely to be equipped with adequate ventilation. It would be cruel to report this news if there weren’t easy ways to fix the problem—after all smoking cigarettes is optional, but cooking dinner isn’t. Happily, we live at a moment when the problem is easily fixed. The magnetic induction cooktop, like the electric heat pump, is a miraculous piece of technology. It uses…magnets to heat up pots and pans and cook your food. (Don’t ask me how). The stove doesn’t get hot (see the picture above of the man sticking his hand next to the pan of boiling water) but the food does. And it’s cheap. This link will take you to an Amazon offer of an induction cooktop for less than $60. I used this model quite happily for years (as did the thousands of other reviewers) until we broke down and installed a full induction cooktop. You do need a pan made of an alloy that attracts magnets—I wager that if you take one off your fridge and try sticking it to your pots you’ll likely find a few. (Cast iron works, and stainless steel. Your good stuff—the All-Clad, the Le Crueset—should work). And it cooks just fine. If you want to boil water, it’s much faster than a cooktop. You can control the heat quite accurately; I like to use a wok, and it works for that. It works for everything. The natural gas industry hates this technology, just like they hate heat pumps; their entire business model is, ‘we dig stuff up and set it on fire.’ One of the classic pieces of recent environmental journalism came from Rebecca Leber in Mother Jones when she showed how the gas lobby was paying social media influencers to insist that somehow cooking over a blue flame produced better food. “#cookingwithgas makes food taste better,” says Camille, an LA-based foodie who poses artfully with her spatula, to her 16,700 followers. This is not true. What is true, as Leber reported, is the following: Shelly Miller, a University of Colorado, Boulder, environmental engineer who has studied indoor air quality for decades, explains that when a stove burns natural gas—just as when a car burns gasoline—that combustion reaction oxidizes molecules in the air to create nitrogen oxides, which can make us sick. “Cooking,” she says, “is the No. 1 way you’re polluting your home. It is causing respiratory and cardiovascular health problems; it can exacerbate flu and asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in children.”Some environmental problems are hard to solve. But this one shouldn’t be. All in all, living in a house with a gas range is a risk factor equivalent to living in a house with secondhand cigarette smoke!     https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/turn-off-the-gas?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email    

How about getting the importance and urgency about the Climate Emergency out to your friends and the general public by establishing a Zoom Session to discuss issues posted on the Haggard Earth Website.... or perhaps a Book Discussion Group- check out the Worth Reading for suggestions.....or even bring up Environmental Issues at a dinner or social gathering. Do you belong to a club- outdoor or other organization, then open up this important issue up for discussion.......or if you have really strong concerns and the extra time, work with others to establish a not-for-profit society to achieve positive environmental and social action- God knows at this desperate time we need more of them. The following organization is an exemplary example of this kind of action......                                FOOD STASH FOUNDATION.......Did you know? In Canada we waste 58% of the food we produce…That contributes 56.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent to the atmosphere every year. And yet, 1 in 6 children in BC are food insecure. In 2017 we were thrilled to become a part of the YVR Prep community and work out of this Burnaby-based food commissary. The access to cold storage gave us the ability to expand our programs and collaborate when the pandemic hit. In 2020, we were honoured to be recognized as finalists in the Burnaby Business Excellence Awards for 2020- for not for profit organization of the year, and environmental sustainability We owe this accomplishment to our staff, volunteers and community members who share and support our passion for eliminating waste and building food security.                    Food Stash Foundation has a two fold mission: reduce the environmental impact of food waste and bridge the food insecurity gap that exists within our community. Our Vision
Food Stash’s vision is a sustainable food system that supports healthy communities and a thriving environment                   https://www.foodstash.ca/mission

Many love to cook on gas — including myself, when I got my first experience of doing so after many years cooking on electric. But alas, gas cooking is polluting, dangerous, and fuels climate change. Gas stoves have got to go. Luckily, there is a cutting-edge technology to replace them that is better in almost every way. The most convincing argument against gas stoves is straightforward: They poison the air in your home. Burning natural gas or propane creates nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and particulate pollution. In unventilated spaces especially, this can lead to vastly greater concentrations of these toxic chemicals — up to 100 times the outdoor level, as shown in a literature review from the Rocky Mountain Institute — which are a risk factor in asthma, heart disease or other cardiovascular problems, and other illness, particularly for children. To be fair, the research on gas stoves directly causing asthma or other respiratory problems is at this point still being ironed out. But the circumstantial case is obvious and convincing — at bottom, anyone who studies the chemistry of combustion will understand intuitively that having an open flame in an indoor space is an extremely bad idea. Vent hoods can help with pollution, but they're not completely effective, they dump your heated or cool air outside, and many homes don't have them in any case. Gas stoves are also a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Now, they don't emit nearly as much as furnaces or water heaters (since they are not used nearly as often), but they also tend to leak more unburned methane, which is 86 times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat over a 20-year period. Every little reduction in greenhouse emissions helps fight climate change. However, there is a better way: induction electric stoves. These use electromagnetism to directly heat up a pan, rather than getting an element hot through electrical resistance and then heating up the pan that way. This is not only faster than radiant heating, it is faster than gas — much faster, in fact. Heating up a quart of water via induction can take something like one-fourth the time. Speed and direct energy delivery also make induction much more precise — very useful for frying, making candy, or anything else requiring accurate temperatures. Induction is also much more efficient, because the energy is delivered directly into the pan itself. That in turn cuts down on ambient cooling needs, since less heat leaks into the cooking space — meaning less energy used on air conditioning, and more comfortable kitchens (especially in busy restaurants).          https://theweek.com/life/1004780/the-case-against-gas-stoves          also.....https://grist.org/buildings/your-gas-stove-is-warming-the-climate-even-when-its-turned-off/