Last month, Grist published a 5,000-word article by one of its “climate reporters” that lamented the difficulty of trying to “electrify everything” in the “green, two-story colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac in Burlington, Vermont,” that the reporter shares with his wife. The article “Emission Impossible” was a tiresome exercise that went into minute detail about the cost of induction stoves (“the least expensive models start around $1,100, or almost twice the price of a basic gas stove”) and heat pump dryers.

The writer then went through the wallet-emptying costs of trying to replace their boiler (around $20,000) and the higher cost of heating with electricity than with gas (“We’d spend $1,700 annually compared to the $1,100 or so we spend burning gas to keep warm.”) And then there was the cost of upgrading their electric service, cutting holes in their attic and ceilings, and sundry other tasks that had to be done to, as the writer put it, wean “ourselves off natural gas.” But the effort was worth it, the reporter claimed, because “from a climate perspective…getting rid of gas is a bonanza.”

Yes, well.

Given the extent of energy poverty around the world, I’d guess that one or two billion people would be happy to switch places with that Grist reporter and live in that very same “green, two-story colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac” and in doing so, endure the misfortune of having to use natural gas. However, the article reflects the ongoing legacy media lovefest with the claim that attempting to electrify everything will save us from catastrophic climate change.

The notion that the U.S. should get rid of natural gas or that doing so would be a “bonanza” is — to use a technical term — total bonkers crazy town.

About 47% of all the homes in the country rely on natural gas furnaces for heating. Heating with gas is far cheaper than heating with electricity. Thanks to the shale revolution, private ownership of mineral rights, and hydraulic fracturing, the U.S. is now producing record quantities of gas, and because of that, we have a cost advantage over nearly every other country on the planet. European consumers now pay more than four times as much for natty as their American counterparts. Over the past few years, the U.S. has become a natural gas powerhouse, and the fuel has become an integral, irreplaceable part of our economy. My pal, Doomberg, made that point back in February, explaining that a key reason the U.S. economy has not fallen into recession is because it’s increasingly fueled by cheap natural gas. As the famed green chicken explained, “Given the ever-increasing role of natural gas across vital arteries of the US economy, its price is perhaps even more important than that of gasoline — an under-the-radar consequence of the shale boom.” The chicken continued, “Given the strategic objective of onshoring critical supply chains and the huge competitive advantage that cheap natural gas bestows upon the country, is it any surprise the US manufacturing sector is thriving?… Cheap natural gas is the bedrock of the US economy. It explains much of the country’s economic resilience.”

I have been promoting N2N, natural gas to nuclear, for more than 14 years. If we are serious about reducing CO2 emissions, those two sources are the obvious way forward. I continue to believe in the long-term prospects for nuclear energy. But natural gas is the fuel of the moment. These 11 charts help explain why.

Chart 1

This chart is denominated in exajoules (EJ). An EJ is approximately equal to 1 quadrillion Btu, or the energy contained in 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Regardless of your preferred energy unit, the U.S. natural gas sector is enormous.