Berkeley faces two great crises.

1. The sky is falling because man has made too much dirty technology that enables places like Berkeley to exist.

2. Political incorrectness.

The great municipality managed to tackle both in one fell swoop (a term that is probably either racist or sexist for reasons soon to be revealed in a major media essay) by banning manholes and natural gas.

At a Tuesday night city council meeting, Berkeley became the first city in America to ban the use of natural gas piping in new construction. But that was not the only utility-related issue they saw fit to attend to. No, there was another matter on deck: Eliminating the gendered connotations of words like “manhole” in the city municipal code.

No longer will the streets of fair Berkeley be dotted with manholes, nary a womanhole or nonbinaryhole in sight. With Tuesday night’s vote, they have all been transmuted into “maintenance holes,” that highest, hardest glass manhole-cover finally shattered.

So Obdusman has been renamed to Ombuds. Bondsman is bondsperson. Pregnant women have been renamed to pregnant employees. And sorority has been renamed to collegiate greek residence. And Berkeley has been renamed back to national joke.

But it’s not all fun and games in the city of Berkeleythings. 

There’s no more natural gas in private homes.

Berkeley has become the first city in the nation to ban the installation of natural gas lines in new homes.

The City Council on Tuesday night unanimously voted to ban gas from new low-rise residential buildings starting Jan. 1.

The city will include commercial buildings and larger residential structures as the state moves to develop regulations for those, officials said.

The ordinance allocates $273,341 per year for a two-year staff position in the Building and Safety Division within the city’s Department of Planning and Development. The employee will be responsible for implementing the ban.

Of course it does.

Every tyranny is motivated by the need to find jobs for worthless human beings whose only possible career is oppressing others.