Rare victory as air board rejects bans

A 2021 article in the left-wing publication, Mother Jones, had an ominous headline: “How the fossil fuel industry convinced Americans to love gas stoves.” But there’s no conspiracy here, as many consumers understandably prefer gas stoves, water heaters, fireplaces and furnaces to their electrical alternatives because of their real-world cooking and heating attributes.

Yet banning new sales of those appliances—or placing enough restrictions on them to restrict their widespread sale — has been high on the to-do list of environmental activists, who are convinced they contribute to manmade climate change.

Local governments have gotten in on the action. The San Francisco Bay Area in 2023 rolled out a ban on various gas appliances beginning next year.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District crafted rules that would have discouraged the sale of such appliances in the four counties it oversees: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino.

According to CalMatters, the rules would have ramped up sales targets of zero-emissions appliances from 30% in 2027 to 90% in 2036. Manufacturers would have been hammered with large per-unit fees for every gas unit sold. It was a glorified ban.

Fortunately, the board rejected the proposal at a boisterous public meeting this month.

The rejection comes as the Trump administration has threatened to challenge what it views as illegal bans.

The board will revisit the rules in its committees, but consumers who enjoy gas appliances—and those of us who champion consumer choice over heavy-handed mandates—dodged a bullet.

As we’ve explained, climate-change warriors take a restrictive approach even though the items they’ve banned — e.g., single-use plastic bags and gas-powered lawn equipment—have little impact on the climate.

They often resort to scare tactics. In recent years, anti-natural-gas activists conducted a campaign to convince the public that such appliances pollute their indoor air.

They only got so far with such rhetoric.

Mainly, they’re just annoying us.

At least their ever-expanding agenda might finally be running into a wall.

We’d urge regulators to first fix California’s overstressed electricity grid rather than forcing consumers to buy the kinds of appliances not everybody wants.