Writing in the Daily Telegraph, David Blackmon looks at the latest stage of the administration’s war on gas stoves:

[The] Department of Energy’s (DOE) efforts to regulate at least half of all gas cooking stoves off the market through increased efficiency standards and force a costly redesign of up to 90 per cent of new gas cooktop models by 2027. In proposing the new standards, DOE officials released estimates of cost savings for consumers of “$650 million to $1.71 billion,” adding that “net societal benefits (including pollution reduction and health savings) would be even higher.”

Blackmon was unimpressed by these numbers, noting, for example, that

[The] DOE’s own estimate is that the new efficiency standards would save consumers a rounding-error $22 over 14.5 years in operating costs. At $1.50 per year, consumers would be unable to recoup the higher retail price of the electric replacement over an entire lifetime.

But then the DOE does not appear to have been impressed by these numbers, either:

Just days before the President and his entourage departed Washington DC for Utah, DOE was forced to publicly admit that even its paltry original cost savings estimates for consumers were significantly overstated, by as much as 30 per cent. DOE now admits that its proposed new standards would result in savings for each consumer of just 9 cents per month.

As is the case so often with such measures, any sense of proportionality seems to be absent:

The Heritage Foundation’s calculation based on DOE’s own data concluded the most optimistic possible outcome for the new standards would result in a net global temperature mitigation of 0.0009 degrees Celsius.

Then again, pointless asceticism has been a feature of many religious or quasi-religious traditions (a category into which climate fundamentalism fits fairly comfortably), as is the use of symbolism. The squeezing out of gas stoves is meant to reinforce two closely related messages. The first is that no climate “sin” is too small to escape notice in the relentless quest for purity, and the second is a sense of urgency. The climate crisis/emergency is so great that nothing must be spared in the effort to stave it off.

And, as can be seen in other countries, the climate crusade is entering politically dangerous territory.

Blackmon:

The DOE’s restatement of its cost savings estimate came shortly after a Harvard/Harris poll showed more than two thirds of American adults oppose these efforts to ban gas stoves using the climate change rationale. That result included 55 per cent of self-identified Democrats, an ominous sign for the President’s agenda.

That agenda does not, of course, stop there.

The restatement also came amid administration efforts to use efficiency standards and other regulatory measures to force consumers to switch to costly alternatives to water heaters, furnaces, air conditioners, portable generators and other common appliances.

And then, of course, there is the small matter of electric vehicles . . .