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If this petition was to ban the general cutting and burning of wood for cooking and heating, we would all laugh because the downsides of powering our lifestyles
by snowwrestler 4y ago
If this petition was to ban the general cutting and burning of wood for cooking and heating, we would all laugh because the downsides of powering our lifestyles that way are so obvious to us today.
Some people do use wood for heating (in a wood-burning stove for example) but those are rare exceptions that either make sense contextually (a cabin far from infrastructure) or as a sort of aesthetic experience, like playing your favorite album on vinyl instead of Spotify.
But we all know why we should not heat, say, every house in Chicago primarily by cutting and burning trees.
I think folks in the future will feel the same way about pulling a bunch of gas out of the ground and individually burning that in our basements, closets, or kitchens. Furnaces are, let’s face it, very old school, dirty and poorly optimized technologies. I can literally see the blue flames through gaps in the metal when my furnace is on, and it’s a nice new high-efficiency model that is less than a decade old. I have carbon monoxide alarms in my bedrooms. Great.
Sure, this petition is a blunt instrument that would cause havoc if implemented as written. But the thing about transitions is that you have to start somewhere or it will never happen. Can we agree that phasing out gas makes sense? Even if this specific petition is flawed.
- baggy_trough 4y agoAdvocating for policies that "would cause havoc" is a bad idea if you want your movement to be attractive to the marginal voter.
- clumsysmurf 4y agoIn Phoenix, seems people use fires for atmosphere as soon as it gets below 80'F. They probably also have the air conditooner on at the same time :P
- pandaman 4y agoAs far as I know, nobody banned wood stoves in the US in order to transition to gas. People transitioned to the better option of gas themselves. As it is now, gas is a better option than electric not just for heat but for other appliances too (cooking, drying, hot water). This is why you want to ban gas. When/if electric appliances become better than gas people will switch to them naturally, without any need for regulation. The same way they switched from horses to cars and from burning wood to burning gas.
- snowwrestler 4y agoYeah, you’re right that there is not a national blanket ban on burning wood for heat. But there were (and still are) a lot of regulations that made gas and electric more attractive than wood for heating. There are national emissions standards for residential wood burning appliances, and in some cases state as well. In addition many localities have restrictions on wood burning and can issue temporary blanket bans based on air quality measurements. The development of this regulation went hand-in-hand with a broader cultural awareness of the importance of air quality (indoor and outdoor)—and a desire to not cut down all the nice forests around the country. So wood has suffered from a source restriction as well.
- pandaman 4y agoWhatever regulations there are now had been set in place after the transition to gas happened, so I wrote "in order to transition to gas".