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Marc Morano
Marc Morano manages CFACT’s award-winning ClimateDepot.com news and information service. He is the award-winning producer, writer and host of CFACT’s Climate Hustle feature films. Marc served as a reporter for “Rush Limbaugh the Television Show” and as a senior advisor to Senator James Inhofe. He is author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” “Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse than You Think,” and “The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown.”
Environmental bureaucrats are out to save you from pizza.
The city government is set to restrict emissions from coal- and wood-fired pizza ovens in restaurants in the city.
New Yorkers are once again suffering at the hands of the unelected food police in the name of public health and climate change.
New Yorkers have already endured former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempts to ban soda sales of over 16 ounces for their own good and are facing Gov Kathy Hochul’s gas stove and furnace bans in the state, all in the name of climate change.
And now, another one bites the crust as New York City officials are going after pizzerias using the century-old cooking methods, citing the ovens’ allegedly excessive carbon emissions.
But how many pizzas would you have to order to equal just one trip on John Kerry’s private jet?
In 2021, Kerry’s private jet emitted an estimated 116 metric tons of carbon in less than a year.
Private jets emit up to 40 times as much CO2 per passenger as commercial flights.
By comparison, the carbon footprint of a wood-burning stove (a reasonable facsimile of a pizza oven) is barely measurable. The 8 Billion Trees project estimates that the “carbon footprint of wood-burning stoves” can be up to 15.6 grams an hour or 374 grams a day. This is measured in grams, not metric tons.
You would have to burn that stove for 310,160 days – that is, 849 years – to equal what hypocrite Kerry puts out in a year.
But wait, it gets better!
Physicist Dr Will Happer, emeritus of Princeton University and the chair of the CO2 Coalition, told the New York Post that restrictions on wood- or coal-fired pizza ovens may increase the carbon footprint of pizza in New York City.
“To the extent that the wood-fired ovens are replaced by electrically heated ovens, which I suppose is what is intended, CO2 emissions will probably increase,” Happer said.
“Even for New York City, most of the electrical power probably comes from burning gas or coal. For a gas-fired pizza oven, all the heat of combustion is used to bake the pizza. For an electrically heated oven, you have to convert electrical power back to heat.
“It is hard to see how emissions could decrease if people want to continue eating the same amount of pizza,” he added.
So before we add the culinary tradition of coal-fired pizza to the growing list of our alleged climate sins, maybe we should heed the words of… Biden climate envoy John Kerry.
“The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what – that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world,” Kerry said in 2015.
Gas stoves, and wood-burning stoves – these are drops in the bucket when it comes to emissions. Actually smaller than that, teardrops. Yet bureaucrats and politicians are intent on making us suffer for their performative pleasure.
We are seeing simultaneous meat restriction proposals in Germany and Ireland.
Embracing the Net Zero agenda, Ireland announced it was culling 200,000 cows (65,000 over three years) to meet its climate goals. Not to be outdone, the German Nutrition Society recommends over 90 per cent reduction in daily meat eating.
As always, it’s the average person who will have to suffer for the religion of the elites.
To New York City bureaucrats, the message is simple: Lay off the restrictions on pizza, gas stoves, appliances, gas-powered cars, and meat-eating in a silly effort to regulate the climate.
This may sound cheesy, but the secret sauce in this battle to save New York’s iconic pizza traditions is to deliver a loud and clear NO to the city bureaucrats.
This article originally appeared in the NY Post.
