> I think we as a society are over-prioritizing personal safety.
This is called safetyism. It’s the notion that perfectly safe conditions are worth the immense tradeoff they require, like removing individual freedom and agency. But it is also the recent trend of claiming safety matters above all other factors to an absolute degree, and that everyone should be forced to value it as such. We see this manifested in political actions that are absolute (mandates, bans etc). There are other definitions for safetyism as well (https://quillette.com/2018/09/02/is-safetyism-destroying-a-g... ). But my point is that life isn’t one size fits all and our policies shouldn’t be either.
Thanks for sharing your experience of working with wood alongside your family. These experiences and their value are unknown to most city dwellers, and they default to assigning zero value on these things when they propose banning everything that isn’t part of their own life. I get what you’re saying about a wood stove. There is value in that ritual and tradition and life’s pleasures. I personally love a gas range for a similar reason, which is that cooking over a flame is culturally important to me. I also find it is simply far better than my induction top for most cooking (except boiling water, for which I have a $20 electric kettle anyways).
In the case of gas stoves and gas furnaces, it’s astonishing that people ignore that most new setups vent to the outside, which is required in many areas. Even if NO2 is elevated, my feeling is that not everything in life has to be 100% clean or safe, since life inherently comes with risks and it is up to each individual to make personal choices about what risks to tolerate for the benefits. Most people cooking daily with gas stoves live long healthy lives and don’t have issues stemming from NO2 exposure and very few are sensitive enough that a minor elevation of NO2 would cause health issues. This is only a problem for the most sensitive of people.
So are gas ranges really a problem or just an overblown fear by proponents of safetyism or climate activists used to justify top down gas bans?
This is called safetyism. It’s the notion that perfectly safe conditions are worth the immense tradeoff they require, like removing individual freedom and agency. But it is also the recent trend of claiming safety matters above all other factors to an absolute degree, and that everyone should be forced to value it as such. We see this manifested in political actions that are absolute (mandates, bans etc). There are other definitions for safetyism as well (https://quillette.com/2018/09/02/is-safetyism-destroying-a-g... ). But my point is that life isn’t one size fits all and our policies shouldn’t be either.
Thanks for sharing your experience of working with wood alongside your family. These experiences and their value are unknown to most city dwellers, and they default to assigning zero value on these things when they propose banning everything that isn’t part of their own life. I get what you’re saying about a wood stove. There is value in that ritual and tradition and life’s pleasures. I personally love a gas range for a similar reason, which is that cooking over a flame is culturally important to me. I also find it is simply far better than my induction top for most cooking (except boiling water, for which I have a $20 electric kettle anyways).
In the case of gas stoves and gas furnaces, it’s astonishing that people ignore that most new setups vent to the outside, which is required in many areas. Even if NO2 is elevated, my feeling is that not everything in life has to be 100% clean or safe, since life inherently comes with risks and it is up to each individual to make personal choices about what risks to tolerate for the benefits. Most people cooking daily with gas stoves live long healthy lives and don’t have issues stemming from NO2 exposure and very few are sensitive enough that a minor elevation of NO2 would cause health issues. This is only a problem for the most sensitive of people.
So are gas ranges really a problem or just an overblown fear by proponents of safetyism or climate activists used to justify top down gas bans?