Climate change has been a global health crisis for decades. But it’s not just caused by
smoke stacks and cars that would impress me in 1987. I sent Allana Harkin to investigate.
You invited gas inside your life. You thought gas was your friend. Little did you know that
the danger was coming from inside your house. Specifically, your kitchen. Gaslight! Your
gas stove is going to kill you! Gaslight! The movie about a killer stove. Mwahahaha!
[coughing] - No, wait! This was supposed to be a fun
little piece about summer recipes and cooking! I love my gas stove! It’s efficient, it
makes me a professional chef, and all these influencers say it makes the food, oh, I don’t
know—tastier? Brownier? Flamier? - The natural gas.
- Natural gas. - Natural gas.
- Look at that flame. You’ll have to pry my gas stove from my
cold, dead hams. I make delicious pan-fried ham.
- The gas industry has done a great job marketing. I have to give it to them. But gas stoves
emit a lot of the same pollutants that come from our car tail pipes in your home.
That can’t be good for you. - I know.
This is Brady Seals. She recently wrote a study that I hate, showing me that everything
I ever aspired to is a disappointing illusion. A kitchen island and a gas stove are what
dreams are made of. Are you trying to tell me that the gas stove industry has been gaslighting
me? - I’m sorry to say it, but burning gas in
our buildings is actually contributing about 10% to our carbon emissions.
Big gas doesn’t want you to know that when you use your gas stove, it’s directly linked
to fracking, climate change, and even your lungs. Lungs are like my third favorite pulmonary
organ! We looked at 50 years, nearly, of health research
on what are the human health risks of gas stoves. And what we found is that it’s mostly
respiratory because we are breathing in these pollutants. They are invisible, odorless pollutants.
Is there anything that you think is worse than a gas stove?
- Gas oven? Are you just, like, the biggest buzzkill at
a party? If we look with special science goggles, which I totally own, we see that gas stoves
emit poisonous particles that have been shown to give kids asthma and can worsen respiratory
and cardiovascular diseases. Jesus! Who would have thought having an open flame in your
home could do that? And like all evil things, it affects vulnerable communities the most.
- Lower income people and people of color are also more affected.
Why can’t everybody just go, “You know what, it’s killing everybody! Can we just
shut the gas stove s*** down?” - I think the gas industry doesn’t want
to look at the health science, but we shouldn’t be in this position as individuals, as family
members. Why don’t gas stoves come with a warning label?
Well, in defense of the gas stove industry, if you put a warning label on it, the warning
label’s gonna catch on fire. - That’s a good point.
And what happens when you try to expose the truth about gas? They get vicious.
- I’m Mayor Heidi Harmon and I was targeted by the gas industry.
Mayor Harmon’s town passed an ordinance to incentivize new buildings to cut out gas,
but they got some surprising, let’s call it pushback.
- The union president of the gas company said that, “I’m not going to rest until that
f***ing red-flowered Cruella de Vil c*** and all those other f***ing b*****s are voted
off that f***ing council.” And so the intimidation tactics were at an all-time low.
Wow. This Cruella de Vil reboot got really dark. And remember those influencers who love
gas as much as the color burnt orange? They were actually paid by the gas industry. Not
so cute now, huh? Gaslight!
Those big groups of gas loving citizens? You guessed it: they’re actually actors paid
by big gas. Holy shit!
And last year, the gas industry went full on Michael Myers.
- They threatened to come to a council meeting during the pandemic. And so to see someone
actually write in a letter that they were going to busload in people that are potentially
COVID-positive to intentionally infect—and therefore potentially kill—members of our
community. They stopped at nothing. Okay, this piece is starting to scare me .So
what can we do to snuff out the gaslighters? - The new electric stoves is induction. It’s
the future of cooking. It’s sort of like the Tesla of cooking because you’re boiling
water in half the time. Is this switch easy to do? No! Especially
with the gas industry going all Carrie’s mom and saying if we ditch our stoves:
- They’re all gonna laugh at you! So inducing people to induct is gonna be tough.
Maybe it’s like, you need to make induction stoves and electric stoves seem cooler than
they are. Because right now they seem super lame. So how would you do that?
- How would I do that? I think we need celebrities. Chrissy Teigen would be great. I don’t know!
Do I hear that you need an influencer? - I do. Are you…?
I have been waiting for my moment. I never thought it would be with a portable induction
stove. - This could be big.
Yes, Brady, it’s gonna be huge. And this is my time to shine. Me and my super sexy
hot plate. Watch out, ladies. I’m combining hot girl summer with hot plate summer. #SeductionInduction
#HotWhenYouWant #LiveLaughStove Okay, what else can I do to get you excited to #induce
me? This? How about now? Wait. Did I just do it with a stove?