Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, expected to officially launch a 2024 presidential campaign, on Wednesday floated the idea of “no tax on gas stoves,” despite a recent study showing that gas stoves have given 650,000 children in the U.S. asthma.
While there is no one coming to take gas stoves out of Americans’ homes, experts suggest at least ensuring proper and adequate ventilation in homes that have them, or switching to a different method, like electric or induction appliances.
Over the past two weeks conservatives have promoted the false claim that the Biden Administration, Democrats, the left, or the federal government was preparing to ban gas stoves. Experts have noted the danger of gas stoves to indoor air and the overall environment for decades.
But DeSantis, who is positioning himself as a far-right culture warrior even more extreme than Donald Trump, is using the latest conservative craze to boost his bonafides.
“We may even say, ‘no tax on gas stoves,'” DeSantis bragged, suggesting he would remake state tax policy to appeal to a larger right-wing audience. “We’ll do that. That’s fine with me.”
“I want you to be able to have a choice,” he added, suggesting that there currently isn’t a choice between types of stoves because of sales tax, which is false.
“By raising fears of a ban on gas stoves,” The Washington Post last week reported, “Republicans are in some ways taking a page from former president Donald Trump, who often complained about energy-efficiency standards for household appliances — including lightbulbs that make you ‘look orange,’ toilets that ‘don’t get any water,’ showers that lack a ‘full shower flow’ and ‘worthless’ dishwashers.”
DeSantis was speaking in Daytona Beach Shores with his head of the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection, in front of a hurricane-damaged public building, to announce “continuing hurricane recovery efforts in Florida,” according to WESH.
“He announced more funds would go toward Central Florida counties hit by hurricanes Ian and Nicole.”
“It’s part of a new hurricane relief package DeSantis signed into law last month,” WESH adds. “Some of that package included $150 million that will go to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to support local beach renourishment projects and a new grant program to help homeowners protect their property against coastal erosion.”
Last year NPR reported how gas stoves contribute negatively to climate change. “Commercial and residential buildings account for about 13% of heat-trapping emissions, mainly from the use of gas appliances.”
Columbia University’s Climate School in October published a report titled, “Here’s What We Know About How Climate Change Fuels Hurricanes.”
“When Hurricane Ian hit Florida, it was one of the United States’ most powerful hurricanes on record, and it followed a two-week string of massive, devastating storms around the world,” the Climate School observed. “Scientists conduct attribution studies on individual storms to gauge how much global warming likely affected them, and those studies are currently underway for Ian.”
Watch DeSantis below or at this link.