Echo of Australia gas ban rings across the globe

Energy options: A worker standing on the uploading dock of a terminal in Fos-sur-Mer, France, while an LNG tanker boat arrives. Economies have a choice of whether to build their energy infrastructure around a fickle, finite geological resource or the limitless bounty provided by renewable technologies. — AFP

THE appeal of a good old-fashioned culture war fight is so much greater than thinking about the hard problems of energy planning and security.

So it’s hardly surprising that the decision of Australia’s Victoria state to ban natural gas connections to new properties has turned into a replay of a cooked-up US debate about a supposed federal ban on gas stoves. (No such ban was ever proposed by the Biden administration, though the House of Representatives passed a bill in June to head off the imagined threat, just in case.)