WILL YULE LOGS BE BANNED IN BOSTON ?
Woodstoves were once objects of Green pride, conspicuous symbols of energy independence, and rejection of fossil fuels. No longer.
Now, as the darkness of winter descends, and the New Paranoia spreads fear of breathing over an ever-more regulated land, Richard Nixon's 1970 Christmas present to the nation, the EPA, is out to eliminate everything that emits anything, woodstoves included.
Not to be outdone, Canada's new Nanny Statists have embraced Montréal's proposal to eliminate all fireplaces.
Farewell, renewable energy : The EPA has just given the Founding Fathers and the Sierra Club the boot by banning the production not just of Doctor Franklin's energy-efficient Stove, but 80% of 21st Century America's wood-burning home heating gear as well.
As usual, the culprit is Prohibition by Incremental Regulation. So stringent have the agency’s rules become that you can already violate the limits of its airborne particulate regulations by blowing out a birthday cake in a small room, let alone setting fire to a Yule log, or roasting a panful of chestnuts.
Woodstoves were once objects of Green pride, conspicuous symbols of energy independence, and rejection of fossil fuels. No longer.
Now, as the darkness of winter descends, and the New Paranoia spreads fear of breathing over an ever-more regulated land, Richard Nixon's 1970 Christmas present to the nation, the EPA, is out to eliminate everything that emits anything, woodstoves included.
Not to be outdone, Canada's new Nanny Statists have embraced Montréal's proposal to eliminate all fireplaces.
Farewell, renewable energy : The EPA has just given the Founding Fathers and the Sierra Club the boot by banning the production not just of Doctor Franklin's energy-efficient Stove, but 80% of 21st Century America's wood-burning home heating gear as well.
As usual, the culprit is Prohibition by Incremental Regulation. So stringent have the agency’s rules become that you can already violate the limits of its airborne particulate regulations by blowing out a birthday cake in a small room, let alone setting fire to a Yule log, or roasting a panful of chestnuts.
That's not enough for the EPA. Washington wants airborne particulate emissions cut below 1 / 1000th the level of secondhand tobacco smoke -- a maximum of roughly ten micrograms per cubic yard of air.
The consequences are draconian: Breathe Free or Freeze. Henceforth only air-tight wood stoves with platinum-plated catalytic converters elaborate as a Mercedes engine's will be allowed to warm Alaskan log cabins, or rural homes in the southern 48. This could signal the end of barbecue joints , Cajun restaurants , and blowtorch-wok Chinese cuisine as well. Under the new rules, one pan-blackened redfish belts out enough black carbon nanoparticles to redline the air quality in a fair sized cathedral, and it remains to be seen if freedom of religion can allow for candles or incense burning in churches high or low.
More ominously, what will become of those who face the winter to come if , as President Obama wills, the EPA regs are enforced as law? One bizarre consequence of the frakking revolution is that more American home are heated with wood than oil -- the current census puts 2,400,000 housing units at risk of freezing if regulatory overkill snuffs out their primary heat source.
Retrofits are not going to help much, and noncomplient older stoves can't legally be traded in for new models - the EPA says they must be destroyed, or recycled. Fired by the EPA's zeal, some state and municipal governments already fine home owners who persevere in staying warm , and fussbudget Attorneys General in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont have also sued for an EPA crack down on outdoor wood-burning water heaters.
The consequences are draconian: Breathe Free or Freeze. Henceforth only air-tight wood stoves with platinum-plated catalytic converters elaborate as a Mercedes engine's will be allowed to warm Alaskan log cabins, or rural homes in the southern 48. This could signal the end of barbecue joints , Cajun restaurants , and blowtorch-wok Chinese cuisine as well. Under the new rules, one pan-blackened redfish belts out enough black carbon nanoparticles to redline the air quality in a fair sized cathedral, and it remains to be seen if freedom of religion can allow for candles or incense burning in churches high or low.
More ominously, what will become of those who face the winter to come if , as President Obama wills, the EPA regs are enforced as law? One bizarre consequence of the frakking revolution is that more American home are heated with wood than oil -- the current census puts 2,400,000 housing units at risk of freezing if regulatory overkill snuffs out their primary heat source.
Retrofits are not going to help much, and noncomplient older stoves can't legally be traded in for new models - the EPA says they must be destroyed, or recycled. Fired by the EPA's zeal, some state and municipal governments already fine home owners who persevere in staying warm , and fussbudget Attorneys General in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont have also sued for an EPA crack down on outdoor wood-burning water heaters.
