San Francisco Bay Area Nanny Staters Want To Ban Home Fireplaces
And the insanity of the nanny-staters just keeps on keepin’ on. They don’t quit, and they won’t be satisfied until they take by force of law everything that makes life worth living and we all end up eating roots and berries. Raw roots and berries.
I must have missed the initial article on this in the San Francisco Chronicle, but an editorial by a writer named James Earl Warren caught my eye this morning. It seems that, according to a group called the Bay Area Air Quality Management District fireplaces are bad. Very bad:
Under the auspices of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, “public hearings” are being held to determine the fate of the family hearth.
Those of us who live in rural areas have a pretty good idea what the outcome is going to be.
Yeah….those “public hearings” are going to be packed with the type of lefty liberal wack-jobs who hang out in trees, blame Bush for everything from global warming to diaper rash, and pray to Mother Gaia lest we offend her further. The article goes on to make some very good points:
The scientific method follows a rigid methodology. Ask a question. Do background research. Construct a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. And then, communicate the results.
So what is the question? Are the fires in our homes bad because they add to global warming? Release carbon dioxide into the air? Pollute the atmosphere with soot and particulate matter? All of the above?
Where is the research? The Chronicle reported that “government studies” indicate that 33 percent of all “particulate matter” comes from your fireplace and mine. With all the industry and all the cars in the Bay Area, does anyone actually believe that?
Ask questions? Do background research? A hypothesis that can and should be tested? Can’t do that. Might have to deal with facts, old boy. No, no.
Shouldn’t we be given more quantitative information such has, “How many fireplaces are there in the nine counties? How many are used each night? How many hours is each fireplace used? How much “particulate matter” is expelled from each fire? How many parts per million are in the air? How much dissipates into the atmosphere?”
Is this decision truly about air quality or global warming?
Actually, somebody probably did all of that at some point, the end result of which is resting comfortably in the bottom of someone’s desk drawer. Having that information to work with would be…..incovenient. And here is what I think is the most important issue of all. It’s called “quality of life”:
We stoke our hearths for two reasons.
First, many rural people burn wood because they can’t afford to heat their old houses with electricity. Many more feel that burning wood does less damage to the planet than increasing their carbon footprint by using so much electricity.
Banning fires would hurt the elderly who live on fixed incomes and the poor in general. It would be an added tax on the rest of us and increase dependence on petroleum.
Second, for many of us, a fire crackling in the fireplace is about a different kind of energy – psychic energy. After a day’s work, is there anything nicer than coming home and having a class of Napa Valley Cabernet in front of a roaring fire?
Rainy Sundays find us stretched out on the couch, newspapers scattered, 49ers on the TV, and a fire roaring in the fireplace.
On wintry school nights, our children used to come down into the living room to do their homework in front of the fire as my wife and I read.
If the nanny staters have their way all of that will be illegal and they can nod with satisfaction as they go to their global warming conferences and fly over those now safe homes in jumbo jets that spew more pollutants than all of those fireplaces in those nine counties could if they were all roaring at the same time.
These people are dangerous, folks, and if this insanity doesn’t clearly show that then nothing ever will.
