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Comment by ianschmitz | Hacker News Reader

How so?

Unelected, unaccountable boards should not be choosing how people heat their homes. There is no safety concern, and there is widespread experience in the trades.

If there is some broader issue, that should be considered by elected legislatures.

Gas is more dangerous than electric. An estimated average of 4,200 home structure fires per year started with the ignition of natural gas. These fires caused an average of 40 deaths per year [1]. There is no combustion with heat pumps, no risk of CO poisoning. Heat pumps are a superior conditioning technology, from both a safety and efficiency perspective. They will also save money versus burning fossil gas over their lifetime (as the price of fossil fuels rise, from a combination of taxes, demand, and constrained supply due to efforts to disincentivize investment in petroleum supply).

This is what these groups are for. To raise building code when warranted.

[1] https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-st...

Drinking soda is also more dangerous than drinking water but nobody mandates me about when I should drink what.

Imagine if I had a heart attack while behind the wheel and hurt someone?? Soda should be banned for this reason.

Soda certainly doesn't meet drinking water standards. The same busy bodies banned it too!

Do you disagree with the concept of a building code? Mandating how buildings are built to increase safety is the purpose of building codes.

There is a fundamental difference between building codes that enforce critical safety needs in order to clearly define negligence...

... and building codes that express someone's preference or taste for how something should be done.

For example, a building code that says all houses must be pink, or all houses must be made from wood, or all houses must use electric stoves, are only tangentially related to someone's opinion on safety at best.

If north america is any example, "considered by elected legislatures" is about the least useful way of getting a result. Limited technical knowledge, staggeringly short-term approach and, um, err, easy virtues just isn't helpful.

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