On Memorial Day weekend, while millions of Americans fired up their beloved gas and charcoal grills to honor the fallen with a little backyard flair, NPR’s climate sermonizers were back on their soapboxes, wagging their tongs at anyone daring to enjoy the smoky aroma of real meat over real fire.
According to Jeff Brady of NPR’s “Climate Desk,” fossil-fuel grills are the new enemy of the environment, and electric grills — yes, the digital plug-and-play stovetops-on-wheels — are the solution. Never mind that, according to a Statista survey conducted by the Hearth, Patio & Barbecue Association (HPBA), 61% of grill-owning Americans prefer gas grills while just 10% have embraced the electric kind. In other words, Americans are sticking to what works — and what tastes better.
Brady’s piece attempted to cast a happy face on the shift to electrified grilling. He featured a couple wheeling their electric contraption across the backyard, boasting of convenience and climate virtue. Meanwhile, most Americans were too busy searing New York strips over gas flames or slow-smoking briskets over hardwood to be guilt-tripped by another taxpayer-funded lecture from the tofu crowd.
Electric grills, Brady proclaimed, are “a key climate solution” because they can be powered by a “cleaner grid.” That’s an interesting pitch considering what happened just hours later in Louisiana: a mass power outage that left nearly 100,000 people in New Orleans sweltering in the dark during a Memorial Day cookout blackout.
Entergy, the local utility, didn’t suffer storm damage or freak accidents this time. The blackout was intentional — a “load shed” ordered by the grid operator MISO to avoid total failure.
One generator was down for maintenance, another unexpectedly failed, and demand spiked just enough to threaten grid collapse. Sound familiar? That’s the same fragile power infrastructure climate evangelists want us to trust with not only our stoves and cars — but now even our grills.
This is the fundamental contradiction of the electric utopia: they want you to plug in everything — even your burger sizzle — while our power grid can’t even survive a mild spring weekend.
When electric demand outpaces supply, you don’t just lose Wi-Fi — you lose refrigeration, air conditioning, medical equipment, and yes, your “climate-friendly” grill. If the next blackout hits during a summer heatwave, it won’t be tofu patties on the line — it’ll be vulnerable seniors, hospitals, and entire neighborhoods.
And let’s not ignore the laughable walk-back buried in Brady’s article: a correction noting that charcoal briquettes — long demonized by climate scolds — are not actually fossil fuels. Oops.
