When will the climate culture wars end?
Both sides deserve some blame.
Good morning! And welcome to Planet Days, a green newsletter for a greenwashed Planet. Thank you to Sam Liptak for editing this week’s post.
If you’re new to Planet Days, I occasionally send out three-minute reads on what it means to go green. Previously, I’ve written about topics ranging from recycling bins and lawns to electric vehicles and trains.
As we enter the new year, we’re going to focus less on weekly climate roundups and more on think pieces like the one below — taking a timely climate story and offering a unique spin.
This week, that spin takes us to an apparently hot-button issue for many: the humble gas stove.
Here we go again.
After a new study found that gas stoves may be linked to 13% of childhood asthma cases in the United States, the commissioner of a federal safety agency said banning new gas stoves was “on the table.” And people were not happy about it.
A very public backlash ensued — surprisingly not over the health damages of gas stoves but over a perceived attack on the right to have gas stoves. The agency eventually had to walk back the comments, confirming that no gas stoves would be banned.
Sigh.
This brief media fiasco is just the latest in fiery, often misinformed rhetoric over climate (and health) policies:
A 2021 Daily Mail article falsely claimed that President Joe Biden’s climate targets would require Americans to slash their meat consumption by 90%, prompting an online outcry in defense of meat.
After a brutal 2021 freeze in Texas, many conservative leaders falsely blamed renewables for statewide power failures — even though the much larger problem was frozen natural gas pipelines, as well as iced gas and coal generators.
Those who quickly defend emissions-heavy practices may feel their way of life is under attack, as I have written about previously. And then there’s paid propaganda, which the gas industry has used to influence consumer preferences.
What I’m most interested in, however, is how the gas stove debate, like many climate debates before it, is justified as a defense against progressives’ “woke agenda” — a term used to describe a performative indoctrination of liberal ideas.
It’s a saga already playing out in the now Republican-controlled House: The party is currently blocking proposed climate-risk disclosure rules by the Securities and Exchange Commission — rules that were part of a “far-left social agenda,” according to one House leader.
Of course, the most obvious lightning rod for “anti-woke” leaders is the Green New Deal, a 2019 proposal that addresses climate change alongside economic inequality and racial injustice.
Since the Green New Deal was introduced by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MI) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), opponents have cast it as a socialist takeover — messaging that’s been highly effective: Most people view the proposal, which has morphed into a stand-in for climate policy in general, as a highly partisan document.
The right’s obsession with “wokeness” is not only about underlying principles of social equity and racial justice, though; it’s fueled at least partly by how these values are projected by the left.
When protesters from the Sunrise Movement blocked Sen. Joe Manchin’s car and stalked his yacht this summer, I seriously doubted that the former coal baron and swing vote would be persuaded by such tactics.
And when Just Stop Oil protesters threw soup at Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery in October, I’m sure few changed their mind on public transit policy (in a survey conducted shortly after the protest, nearly half of Americans said such actions decrease their support of climate action).
Such stunts not only drive sides further apart — they give opponents to climate action a reasonable out: One can dismiss climate policy as the key issue of a bunch of “woke” crazies who chain themselves to gas stations.
At least one major organization sees the writing on the wall. Extinction Rebellion, a climate group known for disruptive protests, recently announced a temporary “shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic,” prioritizing “attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks.”
The move marks a notable shift for a group that has glued themselves to buildings and blocked intersections and airports. Just Stop Oil, meanwhile, said it would continue its provocative tactics.
To be clear, we still need large, nonviolent demonstrations to create social change. And the debate over gas stoves is not the fault of climate protests — that would ignore other key factors like disinformation, propaganda, and politics.
But if we dismiss this latest uproar as simply a culture war sparked by a bunch of fossil fuel pawns, we ignore a larger question: When we’re all sitting on the same powder keg, is only one side holding the match?