My husband and I have decided to purchase a new induction range, to reduce both our fossil-fuel impact and our exposure to toxins. We currently have a beautiful 1940s-era Wedgewood gas range. Would it be unethical to sell or donate our Wedgewood to another user? I am concerned that we would be extending the continued personal risk and environmental impact of our gas range. My husband believes the next user will have decided to obtain a gas range, so the emissions and risk from ours would be displacing those of another, with no net impact. Can you assist us in sorting out the ethical choice? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
You mention two considerations: environmental impact and personal risk. Let’s start with the first. It seems a safe assumption that if you sell your Wedgewood you will, as your husband says, be selling to someone who’s in the market for a gas range. Your husband might also note that, because most of our electricity still comes from burning fossil fuels, the relative fossil-fuel consumption of different types of ranges will be affected by how your local electricity is generated. Induction ranges are impressively energy- efficient, but the power plants that juice them are typically far less so.
On the other hand, there’s reason to hope that renewables will account for a growing share of our electricity. Bear in mind too that a vintage gas range could have a different emissions profile from a contemporary one. New gas ranges have to meet certain efficiency standards. Old ones typically have a pilot light that’s on all the time. They might be leakier too — and when it comes to the greenhouse effect, methane is far worse than CO₂. A 2022 study found that natural-gas stoves release something like 1 percent of the fuel they use as unburned methane, mainly when they’re off.
Yet it’s hard to estimate the effects of a single uncoordinated act. Conceivably, the best outcome for the planet would actually come from your selling the Wedgewood and then using the proceeds to buy a solar-panel-and-battery system for your home. Or from directing the proceeds toward promoting regulations that would prohibit the use of ranges with a certain emissions profile, or that phase out the use of gas for cooking altogether.
The climate crisis is a tragedy of the commons. So you might think you should take this range out of circulation to ensure that you are not implicated in it. Immanuel Kant might have your back: He thought the right thing to do was to follow a rule that you could, as he put it, will as a universal law. (That law might be: “Avoid participating in the creation of a tragedy.”) On the other hand, standard consequentialists, like the utilitarian John Stuart Mill, thought you should care only about the morally relevant consequences of your acts. They might side with your husband — or, weighing the contribution you could be making to positive social norms, they might not.
What resolves things is the health issue you mention. In recent years, concerns have been raised about the nitrogen oxides and other pollutants that gas ranges produce as a result of combustion; some research links cooking with gas to asthma in children. The uncombusted gas that these ranges can leak may also have health consequences. Selling a person something that you know has a serious chance of harming them is wrong. It’s less wrong if you tell them about the risk. (For one thing, using a proper ventilation and exhaust system can mitigate the problem.) Even then, however, if your old range results in harm to its buyers or their children, you’ll have some moral responsibility for it.
All told, my inclination would be to take the cooktop offline. There are a few people who just might be interested in the article as a collectible, for purely decorative purposes; sometimes these things are rented out to film and TV production designers. In those settings, a 1940s Wedgewood like yours can provide atmosphere — without affecting our own.
Readers Respond
Last week’s question was from an a woman looking for advice about her and her spouse’s financial plan. She wrote: “My husband and I have no children and are aging. Between property we own and our retirement savings, our net worth is over $1 million. We are debating estate planning, especially creating a trust to ensure Medicaid eligibility in the event we need long-term care. This is very common where we live. I feel, however, that this is morally wrong, placing the burden of my care on taxpayers to save my assets. My husband feels if it can be done legally, he would be remiss in not ensuring our future. What do you think?”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “You sound as if you think you’d be slipping something past the authorities. Not so. Consider how the details of Medicaid eligibility, as determined by state and federal laws, have been adjusted over the years. … the point is that the estate planning your husband is contemplating is commonplace and accounted for in the way the system is funding. … Advocacy groups worry about elderly people who have been forced to drain their assets in order to get the long-term care they needed — and then finding that they couldn’t afford to repair the furnace. The real scandal here is that you evidently have reason to worry about not being able to afford health care in old age, long-term care being a notable gap in Medicare coverage. In a decent society, preparing for the routine infirmities of age shouldn’t require extraordinary measures.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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In the last days of her campaign, Kamala Harris said that she would propose that at-home long-term care costs be covered by Medicare rather than Medicaid. That plan would have helped a lot of people and would have probably often saved individuals and the government the much higher costs of nursing home care for seniors and disabled people. Medicare doesn’t limit your assets. Seniors could still work and add to their savings. In New York, many Medicaid recipients can only earn about $1,700.00 per month, including benefits like Social Security. Assets, by the way, are limited to about $30,000.00 for unmarried individuals (not including your house if you live in it). — W.
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I am horrified by the letter writer’s tentative plan to protect over $1 million in assets to qualify for Medicaid. How dare she? I have a 46-year old son with significant developmental disabilities. All of the services he needs and receives are paid for by Medicaid. We do not need people like them draining the already-threatened resources Medicaid has when they don’t need them. Because we knew about our son’s disabilities, we bought long-term care insurance many years ago, and we continue to pay really high premiums to protect what money we have to help him after we are gone. Those people, who have no dependent children, could have done the same. They have no right to put at risk benefits for people who actually need them. — Linda
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I think the couple looking into a trust fund to protect their assets should first look into the quality of care available in their area to recipients of Medicaid. Where I live, facilities have a limited number of beds for Medicaid recipients. Someone I know who was dependent on Medicaid and needed care rather unexpectedly could not choose any of her preferred facilities because no Medicaid beds were immediately available. One of those facilities called her family to offer a spot many months after she died. — Ann
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I disagree with the Ethicist. It may be legal to create the trust fund, but I don’t believe it’s ethical. The couple have no direct heirs. As they point out, creating the trust puts the burden of the first $1 million of care on other taxpayers unfairly because they can afford to pay for their own care up to that point. Just because something is legal or common practice does not mean it is moral or ethical. — Thomas
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As always, I appreciate the clear and extensive reply from Dr. Appiah. I am interested, however, in the exclusion of long-term care insurance as a straightforward and less morally ambiguous option. Unless the bulk of that million-dollar net worth is tied up in property, with funds unavailable for premium payments, it would seem a viable option for the letter writer. — Karen
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