AIR CONDITIONERS: NEW CRUSADE AGAINST THINGS THAT WORK

Air Conditioners: New Crusade against Things That Work

 

National Review

 

The Crusade against Things That Work Is Coming for Your AC

By NOAH ROTHMAN

May 3, 2023 1:13 PM

In an op-ed for Fox News, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Ben Lieberman has some disturbing news for Americans who hope to avoid both heat stroke and lighter wallets this summer. The Biden administration’s climate obsessives are coming for your air conditioner.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new regulations on refrigerants are having the intended effect of artificially increasing their cost and contributing to their scarcity. Lieberman writes:

 

Central air conditioners are already impacted while a proposed new regulation for window units is in the early stages, and in both cases the claimed climate change benefits are a big part of the agency’s rationale. Installers say central systems jumped by up to $1,000 when the new rule took effect last Jan. 1, and a total cost of $10,000 is no longer a rarity.

 

Not to be left out, the EPA has a new proposed regulation that would put additional upward pressure on air conditioner prices by outlawing the most affordable remaining models in 2025.

 

The industry targeted by these regulations, Lieberman notes, has given no indication that it opposes them. Just the opposite, in fact, because the effect of this rule is to “create a captive market for greener but costlier new models they have already conveniently developed.”

 

Lieberman wisely links this new regulatory regime to a progressive effort to anathematize and dispense with fossil-fuel-powered home appliances like gas ranges and stoves. Indeed, it is similar to that initiative in that the environmental impacts and adverse health effects of individual gas ranges have been exaggerated, the cost passed on to consumers as a result of their prohibition is substantial, and the alternatives to gas ranges don’t do what gas ranges can. In the pursuit of a nebulous goal with dubious prospects for success, America’s regulators and their technocratic boosters in elected office are making your life measurably worse.

 

It’s not just gas ranges and air conditioners being placed in the crosshairs of those who believe they know what’s best for you. These initiatives are of a piece with the campaign to force you to fork over more of your disposable income to replace your gasoline-powered lawn equipment with electric alternatives — which cannot do the same job as efficiently as gas-powered tools can — and with the phasing out of the incandescent lightbulb in favor of LEDs, which are more expensive, less available, and only approximate the soft, warm light produced by filaments. Such campaigns are akin to the effort in some states to make it illegal to provide shoppers with disposable plastic bags. They have been replaced with reusable bags, which are more expensive, less sanitary, and require more energy to produce.

 

The benefit that society derives from these initiatives is negligible — save for the degree to which a certain type of person to whom Democrats cater is made to feel better about themselves — and the costs are measurable, including making life modestly more annoying. Individually, these are minor irritations. Cumulatively, they become a suffocating burden. The voting public can’t be expected to bear its increasing weight indefinitely.