These green rules tend to be academic exercises and made by people in the offices who have a myopic view of what the real world impact of the rules.
Case in point. New houses now need to be sealed so tight so little cool air/ heat dissipates from the house. Sounds pretty good in theory. Until the builders point out that in real world, air needs to come into the house from somewhere so the ventilation / hood fans can run.
So this rule sounds like its made by someone who looked at the gas CO2 generation data, compared it against the renewal electrical CO2 generation data and made a snap decision without thinking through the real world consequences (just like in the roast meat example).
With that said, often times policy makers make decisions by thinking through what is acceptable to the middle 80%. Now, if Chinese cooks at home lie in the ‘fringe’ 20%, to a policy maker, that may be a trade off they will go ahead and make, rightly and wrongly. But that’s the underlying problem. Should the minority have little say about the ‘acceptable’ standard defined by the majority, even if such standard makes little sense to the minority? Should there be more dialogues before instituting sweeping rules like that? If Alice Waters and her California cooking makes extensive use of gas stoves, I would not anticipate the Berkeley city council instituting such a rule.
I haven’t thought too much when they implemented that law. But i think if they are going to ban gas cooking, ban bbq, wood fire pizza ovens, outdoor camping stoves, indoor wood and gas fire places, gas water heaters, gas furnaces, gas powered vehicles. Make the pain equitable and make everyone contribute to the common good.
I am not well versed enough about ventilation, but wouldn’t a properly-sized and properly-installed hood solve a lot of the indoor air quality issue?
By the way, I am all for sensible regulations for the common good so I am not a deregulation zealot, in case my post above makes me seem like one.
