Finn McRedmond: Now it’s gas stoves – can we ever escape the claws of the culture wars?

Good news for the Aga-traditionalists, the induction hob-futurists, and the electric stove-fogeys. We have all escaped the clutches of the latest health-destroying, climate-ravaging household appliance: the gas stove. It is coming to kill you, and all you hold dear. Apparently.

Gas stoves have become the latest item engulfed by the gaping maws of the culture wars. We may have naively compartmentalised them as mere kitchen aids. But what we did not realise is that they were destined to turn into asthma-inducing machines hell bent on suffocating your households. Or, depending on who you ask, symbols of our heritage which must be protected against rapacious iconoclasts.

Of course this argument, which has nothing to do with stoves, is unfolding in the United States: the world leader in pharmaceuticals, Tex-Mex, and culture wars. Perhaps it feels as though it really couldn’t happen anywhere else. But unfortunately when new battle lines are drawn in this aimless partisanship, no one is exempt.

What is remarkable, and noticeably modern, is how quickly matters of health are getting snapped up into the jaws of zero-sum-game partisanship

In December, researchers issued a paper suggesting that over 10 per cent of asthma cases in the US might be related to fumes leaking out of our stoves but that figure is disputed. Then, someone from the Consumer Product Safety Commission said “products that can’t be safe can be banned.” Then the Wall Street Journal warned that Biden was coming to take your gas stove away. Shortly after The New York Times said “Your Gas Stove May Be Killing you. A Congressional Representative for Ohio tweeted “God. Guns. Gas Stoves” (The Holy Trinity). Ah, the culture war ... so it goes.

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[ America Letter: Gas stove warning cooks up a political storm ]

[ Catherine Cleary: Induction hobs are more efficient, cleaner and faster than cooking with gas ]

This may just be a minor skirmish in a war that has been raging on for years, hopefully soon forgotten. But these rows always happen in the same way. An item or a statue or a person or a word is held up by zealots as a means to demonstrate their political affiliation, and then everyone unwittingly falls into line behind those leading the charge.

“Biden can claw my gas stove out of my cold dead unwoke hands!” one side might say. And the other? “Oh no, they are going to kill us all.”

And now nothing has independent value. Everything belongs to a tribal instinct. If you are not with the stove-ers then you are against them. The middle-ground? I don’t know her.

The mistake we always make, however, is to talk about the culture wars as though they are a new phenomenon – coming in tandem with the confusing “woke” revolution. But the impulses that lead us here have always existed within: the desire to belong to a group, the proclivity to reprimand others for their behaviour, to signify intellectual superiority, to tell on our neighbours, to punish those who do not think or live like us, to demand purity or point out logical inconsistency.

The problem with filtering everything through the lens of these cultural skirmishes is that it allows no space for ambiguity or uncertainty

So, can we ever escape the sharp claws of the culture wars? Of course not, because they do not exist outside of us. They are an expression of who we are. And as for priggish demands for purity? Well, that’s a tale as old as time. I might suggest that this instinct is better taken out on frivolous aspects of our lives – stoves, statues, celebrities – than via inquisitions and crusades and burning witches as we were once wont to do.

[ Gas cookers in Irish homes breaching air pollution limits ]

[ Would installing a wood-burning stove lower our heating costs? ]

What is remarkable, and noticeably modern, is how quickly matters of health are getting snapped up into the jaws of zero-sum-game partisanship. I am sure not many remember the banning of asbestos or lead paint to have caused such an almighty fracas. So, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that the pandemic acted as a vicious catalyst. Not only did it see people adopt virulently strong views on questions still reliant on unfolding evidence. But those views became a means of status-seeking, signifiers of group membership.

We saw it everywhere. “Follow the science” became a somewhat flawed mantra of the entire health crisis. Overnight we were sorted into camps: either as the science-believing, high trust and compliant individuals; or as renegade conspiracy theorists who disavowed any government decree. The important fact that there was a totally reasonable place to sit, somewhere in the middle of both, was lost.

Because the problem with filtering everything through the lens of these cultural skirmishes is that it allows no space for ambiguity or uncertainty. In fact the whole process relies on the idea that the world is binary and everyone secretly belongs to a team. The pandemic didn’t create the conditions for this – we have always been tribal. But it certainly made it worse. In many senses it made it crucial for social survival.

So public health is the topic du jour. Who knows about our gas stoves? Maybe they really are bad for us and we should phase them out, perhaps this has all the markings of another moral panic. But stoves are only just the beginning. Wait until they hear about cigarettes ...