Howard County needs to do the right thing and discourage natural gas in new construction

In a few days, the Howard County Council will have the opportunity to do something utterly sensible, at little or no cost to anyone: Discourage the use of a product that is demonstrably climate-changing, wildly unhealthy, increasingly expensive and occasionally blows up.

Too good to be true?  Not at all.

To achieve all that public good, all the council needs to do is amend the county building code to discourage new homes and buildings from burning methane (so-called “natural”) gas indoors. It shouldn’t even be a controversial idea.

But sadly it is. For nearly a century, the gas industry has bamboozled Americans into believing that burning this dangerous product is benign. Around 1940, a former employee of the American Gas Association gave the phrase “now you’re cooking with gas” to comedian Bob Hope, who then made it famous. In the 1970s, the AGA sponsored Julia Child’s TV cooking show featuring a gas stove and oven and made sure viewers knew it.

The often-seen phrases “natural gas” and “clean burning” are deceptive marketing tropes for a highly refined product whose burning causes immense damage to the climate.

Even as the scientific evidence of global climate disruption gets more frightening, big gas continues its decades-long campaign of confusion, much as the cigarette industry had done earlier. A chilling 1998 action plan from an American Petroleum Institute communications team makes the strategy clear: “Victory Will Be Achieved When … average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.”

If you don’t care about the planet, focus on your family’s health. For decades, scientists have known that burning gas indoors causes respiratory harm, especially in kids.

The venerable American Lung Association recently told this to a federal agency: “Gas stove exposure can worsen asthma symptoms, wheezing, and result in reduced lung function in children and other vulnerable populations, particularly in the absence of ventilation and for children living with existing asthma or allergies. Additionally … research has established that exposure to pollutants emitted from a gas stove and other gas-powered appliances contributes to a variety of diseases including heart disease and stroke, asthma, COPD, lung cancer, type 2 diabetes, premature birth and respiratory infection.”

That’s just awful.

To top it off, burning methane gas in your home is increasingly expensive. A Maryland state agency has published an analysis showing that, within a few years, BGE customers’ monthly winter gas bills will grow to as much as FIVE TIMES what they are now, not because of the commodity price, but because BGE’s monopoly business model allows it to overhaul its ancient underground pipe system and bill gas customers for all its costs and profits.

Unsurprisingly, both the health harms and the skyrocketing gas bills fall hardest on the least well-off. Elected officials in Howard County and elsewhere strive to build affordable housing, but consigning residents of that housing to lifetimes of compromised health and unpayable utility bills is just a horrible idea.

Given the wide availability of efficient, cost-effective electric alternatives for heat, hot water and cooking, discouraging the use of this dreadful product in new homes and other buildings is a modest, reasonable policy step. Why wouldn’t any responsible government do it?

Public confusion, but also intimidating political and legal pushback.

Gas and building industry executives hire powerful lobbyists, and make corporate and PAC contributions, to preserve the status quo. Last year in Annapolis, more than 50 professional lobbyists were arrayed against the Better Buildings Act, which was similar to what the Howard County Council is considering now. Several industry groups, led by the National Association of Homebuilders, have sued both Montgomery County and Washington, D.C., for enacting bills to discourage methane in new buildings, part of a national legal strategy to prevent change.

Back in Howard County, dozens of concerned residents have attended recent council meetings to urge it to discourage gas in new homes and other buildings. Several have compellingly testified. A letter signed by 25 organizations, as well as a petition from 130 high school students, urged the council to act. Even so, it will take political courage for our small county council to slow down climate change, improve children’s health, lower many residents’ utility bills and promote social justice.

But Howard County has a thoughtful, progressive governing tradition, and there appear to be council members willing to resist the pressure. They can improve life for Howard County residents while showing Maryland and the nation how to promote the public good over special interests. If they do it, they deserve to be both celebrated and emulated by other state and local lawmakers.