E.P.A. Set to Ban Wood Stoves Via Executive Fiat

Bangor Daily News Dutifully Runs Anti-Wood Stove Propaganda

By:  David Deschesne

Fort Fairfield Journal, March 5, 2014

  For many people, the high cost of oil and electric heating has driven them to heat their homes with wood just to keep warm and stay alive.  However, the U.S. Government—not an organization that endorses or brooks individualism and self-reliance—is on track to regulate the use of wood burning stoves virtually out of existence.

   According to a report by Larry Bell on www.netrightdaily.com  regarding the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new wood stove regulations he states, “While the EPA’s most recent regulations aren’t altogether new, their impacts will nonetheless be severe. Whereas restrictions had previously banned wood-burning stoves that didn’t limit fine airborne particulate emissions to 15 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3) of air, the change will impose a maximum 12 μg/m3 limit. To put this amount in context, the EPA estimates that secondhand tobacco smoke in a closed car can expose a person to 3,000-4,000 μg/m3 of particulates. Most wood stoves that warm cabin and home residents from coast to coast cannot meet that standard.

   Older stoves that don’t cannot be traded in for updated types, but instead must be rendered inoperable, destroyed, or recycled as scrap metal.”

  Couched in the cover story of protecting the environment, these new E.P.A. regulations are really designed to quash any reliance on naturally occurring sources of energy by a free and independent people and force them to purchase their energy from multi-national corporations in the form of oil, electricity or natural gas at huge costs.  These same corporations also donate to reelection campaigns and provide “under the table” perks to eager E.P.A. bureaucrats who are all too ready to adopt a modern day form of fascism (fascism is a partnership between businesses and government, usually for profit and control of the market).

   In order to enforce what could eventually lead to wood burning stoves that require annual registration stickers, like automobiles, and licensed wood piles for private homes, the E.P.A. is relying on the burgeoning police state apparatus that is being cultured in the U.S. government - whose Department of Homeland "Security" currently has over 2 billion rounds of ammunition on order to be used against the American people.

   Dutifully towing the line for government propaganda against wood burning stoves is the Bangor Daily News (BDN)- inarguably one Maine's leading socialist newspapers.  Like all other government initiatives in the past that seek to limit the resourcefulness and independence of the citizenry, the BDN joins the historical ranks of mainstream press that has sided with the federal government all the way back to the Indian wars of the 1870s when the U.S. government declared war on native Americans because of their ability to independently sustain life without the aid of the overarching hand of the new, corporate-controlled, for-profit government.

   As part of their propaganda puff piece, the BDN ran a story right beside the E.P.A. announcement on the front page of their February 21, 2014 weekend edition that stated wood burning stoves can cause, among other health problems, “premature death.”  The story, written by Jackie Farwell opens with, “Smoke from wood-burning stoves and fireplaces contains harmful gases and tiny particles that, when breathed in, can aggravate and contribute to a host of health problems, including premature death, said Janice Nolen, assistant vice president for national policy at the [American] lung association.”

    This story was conveniently placed front page, above the fold beside the E.P.A. wood stove regulations story in order to psychologically corral an unsuspecting public into supporting the government agency's drastic, unnecessary regulations against a form of heat that has warmed mankind for literally thousands of years.  What it failed to mention is most people don't stand on their rooftops, hovering over their active wood stove chimneys huffing huge amounts of wood smoke into their lungs.  Anecdotal stories obtained by the Fort Fairfield Journal from the area's elderly population indicate they have been living around wood burning stoves for decades with no ill health effects, so the American Lung Association's suggestion that wood smoke is somehow “deadly,” borders on hyperbole, if not outright propaganda.

   Wood stoves only smoke when initially fired up.  Once up to temperature and burning properly, any reasonably constructed wood burning stove will create no smoke at all, converting most or all of the particles into heat - and that without the new E.P.A. mandate in effect.  What smoke may come out of a chimney upon initial firing is quickly dissipated in a slight breeze to below critical levels after several dozen yards from the source.

   Other propaganda pieces BDN has offered were one mirrored on their website from the Sun Journal in November, 2013 with the scary headline, "More dangerous on a dose-by-dose basis than cigarette smoke’: Concerns about wood-stove smoke prompt state review"  and an Associated Press  story going back to 2012 entitled, "Use wood heat? USM study finds potential for indoor air quality problems".  This shows a historical trend that government and academia, along with their surrogates in the mainstream press, have a bias against wood burning stoves that is not proportional to the actual inherent dangers.

   While the E.P.A. regulations don't actually ban wood burning stoves outright, they do require massive new advances in engineering and construction that will likely make the heat sources far too costly for most homeowners to afford - along with the accompanying requirements of homeowners to ensure their wood stoves remain compliant and one day soon even have to pay a licensing fee for firewood stored on their land for home heating purposes. 

   Here in Northern Maine, many a resourceful backyard welder has constructed his own wood burning stove from truck tire rims or quarter inch thick plate steel.  While not “factory assembled,” these stoves do provide a clean, reliable form of heat from wood that can be found pretty much anywhere, thus severing the user from the reliance on expensive electricity or even more expensive fuel oil - much to the chagrin of companies in those businesses who are striving diligently with their accomplices in government to limit or even obliterate the wood option from a future generation of homeowners - thus ensuring the monopoly on home heating will forever remain in the hands of the corporate oligarchy rather than being shared in any way with the local, independent husbandman.