Bay Area Air Regulator: Wood burning kills

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District explains pre-industrial life expectancy.

About the ongoing inversion in the Bay Area and the BAAQMD’s Orwellian effort to stop fireplace use, the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

… “It is all about controlling people and telling them how they should live,” said a resident of unincorporated Mill Valley who declined to use his name because he fears retribution for his regular use of his fireplace.

He and many others who view the bans on wood burning as Orwellian intrusions into their private lives simply ignored the holiday alerts. Some 400 people reported smoke coming out of a neighbor’s chimney over the Christmas weekend. Another 411 reported on neighbors who lit blazes in their homes over New Year’s weekend. The holiday finger-pointing resulted in 108 potential violations that are being reviewed by the air district.

Overall, 2,618 people have tattled to the district about wood fires and smoking chimneys since November, resulting in 314 total violations. That’s compared with almost 2,400 complaints in 2009-10. There were 1,400 complaints in 2010-11, but there were only four air alerts.

Quite a few of the firebugs may soon be getting belated gifts in the mail, but the presents are unlikely to rekindle the holiday spirit. People caught with their hand in the tinder box during alerts receive a warning if it is their first violation. Repeat offenders get $400 citations unless there are extenuating circumstances, like a wood stove being the only available method of heating the house.

Fasano said it is not the home but the hearth that the district is trying to regulate.

“What we want to do is have people really think twice before they burn” and “help them understand how unhealthy wood burning is,” Fasano said. “We may have been doing this for thousands of years, but we didn’t live as long either.”

6 thoughts on “Bay Area Air Regulator: Wood burning kills”

  1. Tom, you claim that “Libertarians, Tea Partiers, Conservatives” (do not wish to) “control others…”
    What nonsense. How about gay rights, family planning rights, union rights, for starters?
    These are all on the Conservative Control Freaks’ agenda

    “It isn’t about the environment; it’s about controlling other people.”

    It’s about public health. And if “controlling other people” improves public health, then that is what we must do, in order to be good citizens.

  2. There’s nothing wrong with the planet, there’s nothing wrong with the planet.
    The planet is fine the people are fucked, difference the planet is fine.Compared to the people
    the planet is doing great it’s been here for 4 1/2 billion years. Have you ever thought about
    the arithmetic, the planet has been here for 4 1/2 billion(billion) years we’ve been here for
    what 100,000 maybe 200,000 years. We have only been engaged in heavy industry for a
    little over 200 years, 200 years vs. 4 1/2 billion years and we have the conceit to think
    that somehow we’re a threat, that somehow we are going to put in jeopardy this beautiful
    blue green ball that’s just floating around the sun. The planet has been through a lot worse
    than us, been through all kinds of things worse than us, it’s been through earthquakes,
    volcanoes, plagues, continental drifts, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, magnetic
    reversal of the poles, hundreds of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and
    meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, reoccurring
    ice ages and we think that plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a
    difference the planet isn’t going anywhere, WE ARE…. We are going away so pack your
    fucking bags folks we’re all going away and we won’t leave much of a trace either, thank
    God for that, maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here but we will be long gone,
    just another failed mutation, another closed end biological mistake, an evolutionary
    culdesac. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, a surface nu-sense. You
    want to know how the planet is doing ask those people in Pompeii that are frozen into
    position from volcanic ash. You want to know how the planet is doing ask the people in
    Mexico City or Armenia or hundreds of other places buried under thousands of tons of
    rubble if they feel like a threat to the planet this week, how about those people in Kilauea
    Hawaii who built there homes right next to a active volcano then wonder why they have
    lava in their living room. the planet will be here for a long long long time after we’re
    gone and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself because that’s what it does it’s a self
    correcting system.

    Written by a great prophet
    the late great George Carlin

    To all the phony liberal scientist wake up and get your heads out of your dumb asses!

    P.S. I BURN WOOD EVERY DAY JUST TO PISS OFF THESE IDIOTS.. I BURN MY RECYCLE AND
    AND FEED ASHES TO MY GREAT LAWN..

  3. And then there are those who wish to be controlled. Absolves them of any responsibility and makes them feel special. So they willingly bite on air scares, climate change scares, health scares. There are seven billion humans on this planet, many in much worse living conditions than north americans, so I do not think we are so all fired fragile. Humans are survivors. We should take pride in that. Power mongers sell those people what they want to buy.

  4. Right on Tom. People crave to control others because they control their own lives.

  5. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.— Robert A. Heinlein
    Those who crave independence (Libertarians, Tea Partiers, Conservatives) are not likely to heed the call for self-inflicted freezing on cold nights.
    Those who crave to control others are more likely to rat out their neighbors for burning leaves and sticks (renewable energy) in lieu of using electricity (from non-renewable coal).
    It isn’t about the environment; it’s about controlling other people.

  6. Lliving inside your own head creates the need to cast out demons that don’t exist and attaches itself to the need to “make a difference” and the persuasiveness of feeling strongly. It feels like – is – a belief-based system with the EPA at the head of the caliphate.

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