Dori: Natural gas bill is Mike O’Brien telling you how to live your life

As I said on Thursday, I do not need government officials telling me how to run my life. Never was this more apparent than with the natural gas controversy in Seattle.

More than ever, we have a lot of helpless, hopeless people who have decided that they are fine with government telling them how to live.

Seattle City Councilmember Mike O’Brien has introduced a bill that almost certainly will pass — a bill to ban natural gas in Seattle. This would impact anyone building a new house or changing out a furnace in the future. It would prevent new buildings from being hooked up to natural gas lines.

I’ve had almost every source of heat imaginable. We had an oil furnace that went out half the time as a kid. In the second house my wife and I bought, the only source of heat was a wood stove. I had to get up at 3 a.m. to stoke that in the winter — that was miserable. We had electric heat for a while; that was expensive.

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Then we built a house about 15 years ago that uses natural gas. Our furnace, our fireplace, our stove, our barbecue all use natural gas. Natural gas was always touted as the clean alternative. It burns clean. I love it. Most importantly, it was our choice.

To have a politician come along and tell us that we will no longer have that option because he thinks it’s bad for the climate is one person trying to control our lives. It’s ridiculous.

Mike O’Brien told his personal home heating story in front of the council.

My wife and I bought our house in Seattle 25 years ago. It didn’t have natural gas, but one of the first things we did when we moved in was, we bought natural gas for the house. We did that because 25 years ago — I was still an environmentalist then — and I believed that was the right thing to do as an environmentalist. We were getting rid of our oil furnace, and at the time, electricity seemed like a dirty alternative, because at the time, our electric grid had coal on it. Some things have changed in the last 25 years.

He attached the term “climate change” to his bill, so of course this is going to pass the Seattle City Council unanimously. There are no free thinkers in Seattle politics. Nobody is allowed to dissent in any way.

So Mike O’Brien is going to tell us what we can and can’t use for personal decisions like heating our home. That is what his party is all about — telling us how to live our lives. At the CNN Climate Town Hall on Wednesday, all the candidates could talk about was what they want to take away from you and me — whether light bulbs, plastic straws, or red meat. It’s all about them proving that they are smarter and nobler than we are.

What amazes me is that this is what some people want.

Mike O’Brien is someone who has never wanted for anything financially for one second of his life. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He grew up in Clyde Hill. He went to Lakeside School and Duke University. He has no empathy for poor or working class people. He believes that he is smarter than poor people. It is such a condescending, royalty-esque attitude.

I’m begging you — be responsible for your own life, make good decisions for your family, and don’t rely on government to tell you what to do.

Listen to the Dori Monson Show weekday afternoons from 12-3 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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