Further and further the encroachment continues. First they tell you what you can eat. Then, where you can smoke. They tell you to buckle up and to wear a helmet.
Now, they are coming after your fireplace, all to combat the threat of global warming:
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.
Still, in the interest of basic fairness, we’d at least like the decision-makers to employ the rudiments of the scientific method, rather than riding the winds of energy dependence and global warming hysteria, before coming to a final decision.
The scientific method follows a rigid methodology. Ask a question. Do background research. Construct a hypothesis. Test the hypothesis. And then, communicate the results.
You are asking political bureaucrats to consider science in making a political decision. Get real.
Meanwhile, centuries of tradition are being tosssed aside for a “crisis” that isn’t real. And he nails it on the head with his last sentence:
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.
During the energy crisis in California, our family closed the parlor doors and gathered in one tiny room around the fire. it was a scene out of a Jane Austin novel. Five of us read, played chess, did homework and paid bills, in a chilly room heated only by our tiny hearth.
Never was our family closer. The fire was more than a source of heat. It was a mystical, magical magnet of love, warmth and togetherness.
We worry that the real issue here isn’t about health, global warming or energy savings, but about control.
It is absolutely about control. As is all this global warming propaganda.
