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My wife and I have always had a non-negotiable when looking for a place to rent: a gas stove. We love cooking together, and countless food shows have impressed upon us that there is nothing more essential to a tasty meal than a flame（火焰）. 

Then came the shift of work forcing us to move into a new apartment with an induction （电磁感应）cooker. Past encounters with the slow and inconsistent heating elements of early electric stoves had soured us to the idea of cooking with electricity, but it took only a couple of days for us to realize that our new induction cooker was far superior: Water boiled at lightning speed; I could set a timer and walk away knowing the heat would automatically turn off. 

Our belated switch to induction came amid a rise of horrifying stories about the health and climate risks of gas stoves. Studies have found cooking with gas is like having secondhand smoke in the kitchen. Worse still, the primary ingredient that fuels gas stoves is methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. That's why I finally quit using gas stoves and abandoned my prior conviction that I could never live in a home without one.

Don't get me wrong-there's still a place for flame, and there's a reason why barbecued food is so delicious. Barbecuing food impart s special flavour that you can't experience with an electric cooker. But dishes that truly require cooking over an open flame are the exception, not the rule.

Changing the fundamentals of our lives is hard. But just as we have stopped commuting by horse, or have replaced a coal fireplace with central heating, it's time to move gas out of our kitchens. Some might be horrified. The rest of us, though, can step calmly into the future. Hopefully the governments, too, will soon smell the gas.