a ban by the city of Berkeley, Calif., on natural gas in new construction, holding that it circumvented the federal government’s power over energy regulations.
Although many environmentalists hope the Ninth Circuit ruling — which was made by a panel of all Republican appointees — will be overturned on appeal, some also say that consumers will voluntarily switch to electric appliances as they become more attuned to the advantages of increasingly efficient and affordable electric alternatives and to the drawbacks of gas.
“Having fossil fuel appliances in our homes, the science is increasingly clear, it’s very bad for our health,” Leah Stokes, an environmental policy expert at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Yahoo News. “You wouldn’t sit in a garage with your car idling. And yet, in a certain sense, that’s what you're doing if you’re cooking with fossil fuels in your kitchen. You’re burning a fire in your house, and we know, just intuitively, that creates pollution.