Good Morning, John. I've had a half a cup of coffee and I'm going to do something I almost never do. I'm gonna make an unscripted video about a thing that I care, very passionately, about. 

You, watching this video to not want a gas stove. Why? Because they suck. Here's the thing that you are right about, the curly-cue heating element stoves, they are the worst. They're hard to clean, they're extremely hard to control. Like you cannot turn them on and off quickly. They take forever to heat up. They take forever to cool down. But what happened is the stovetop and natural gas industry made it so that what takes the place of that in your brain is a natural gas stove. That has like the little blue flames that are so beautiful, that like Gordon Ramsey uses. 

 But what you're doing, when you have a natural gas stove, is burning stuff in your home. Which results in, get this, decreased indoor air quality. And you can get around this by like having your fume hood going full blast, and certainly never have a natural gas stove that doesn't have a hood. Or! Get this! You can have an induction stovetop that has more power and is easier to control than natural gas.

Chances are, there are three pipes connected to your house. There's the one that brings you water, that one's important. The one that takes the water away, we also want that. And the one that brings you methane! What century is this?! It would be like having the gas station bring the gasoline directly to your car. Like, this is a bad idea. Now I know what you're thinking, Hank there is no way that cooking my HelloFresh is significantly adding to climate change. And you're right, but here's the thing, household natural gas use is a big contributor to climate change. Just not mostly the stovetop. However, when natural gas companies ask people how they feel about switching their furnace from gas to electric, or their water heater from gas to electric, they're like, 'I don't care. Whichever. Whichever's better. I don't know.' Because you currently have a really efficient way to get power into your home that isn't a pipe full of methane. It's a power line. And there are great electric water heaters. And there are great electric furnaces and heat pumps. But people say I want my natural gas stove. But that's a tiny percentage of the methane that is actually being sold by the gas companies. Almost all of that is being used by furnaces and water heaters. But as long as people are like, 'I want to keep my gas stove. It's harder to clean, it makes the air inside my house dirty, but House Hunters says that it's a top-tier product.'  

People will keep having the natural gas companies build and replace this extremely expensive infrastructure to pipe gas into our homes. And gas companies are freaking out about this. And they're doing all these campaigns about how great gas ranges are, even though they are objectively worse. Because if they can keep that toehold, they can make it make sense to keep giving you gas for the other things that electric could easily replace. But look, electric could also easily replace your stove. Because induction stovetops are better than gas. And so, one of the most important things you can do as a person who is concerned about climate change is take the little thing out of your brain that says that gas stoves are the best kind of stove. And look at it and be like 'You're a freaking idiot.'

And you throw it on top of your induction stovetop and nothing happens. Because that's not how it works. It induces the heat in the pan. The stovetop itself doesn't get hot, because they're amazing. So you have to put it into a pan, put that on the stovetop, and fry it up. And have it with butter.

This is why I script! That right there is why I script! So that doesn't happen! It's not important that you replace your gas stove right now. In fact, it's probably best that you don't. It's important that you don't think it's better than an induction, because it's not. Because at some point in the future, someone is going to knock on your door and say, 'This area is about to have its natural gas pipes replaced, and we have to decide whether or not to replace them with infrastructure that will last 60-80 years.' And if a bunch of people in your neighborhood say, 'Well, I would but I really like my gas stovetop, it's not going to happen.' And we're going to keep burning methane in people's houses for 80 years! I would be sympathetic if gas were better. But it's not!

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.