Editor:
Developing solutions to self-destructive human behaviors requires deeper and broader understanding of complex motivations (Mailbox, Sept. 14).
While both destructive and toxic, domestic firewood heating is arguably less devastating than “fracked” natural gas (poisoning diminishing sources of fresh, clean water for entire communities).
Humboldt County’s large population of low-income seniors and disabled, with access to firewood, mitigate PG&E’s corrupt, outdated monopoly, freeing money needed for medicine, in-home care, rent, food and transportation.
Energy utility costs could decline if publicly-owned. Until phased-out, natural gas reserves could be restricted to domestic-use, instead of being exported to the highest international bidders, driving up prices.
Until then, Trinidad residents can mitigate impacts of firewood by composing a draft city ordinance limiting time-of-use for wood stoves, or, present a civics lesson plan to Trinidad students willing to take a petition door-to-door, (providing memorable, project-based, experiential learning in the complexities surrounding energy, corruption, firewood and Trinidad’s stark class divisions).
Just a century ago America’s comfortable-class began filling rural communities with noisy, smoky, polluting, unregulated and deadly “horseless carriages” manufactured thousands of miles away, despite widespread opposition as community’s horse-based economies collapsed.
Who among thousands of local residents with an acre or more will be first to build a solar array and sell cheaper energy to their neighbors? Who will be first to learn from Scandinavian and European entrepreneurs taking back public streets with bicycles and mass-produced, peddle-assist “pod bikes” fulfilling 90 percent of student, worker and retiree’s daily commutes?
Local financial institutions and public officials have leadership responsibilities to shift priorities, incentives, policies and investments to alternative energy sources and products that can be manufactured locally to prepare for the future; an imperative that local and national vested interests in outdated, self-destructive industries continue to neglect and oppose.
George Clark, Eureka
This article appears in In search of safe crossing.
The fact that seniors and other higher-risk and medically vulnerable people in our community are compelled to use the dirtiest, most unequivocally health-damaging form of heating available is a tragedy. It is a serious environmental justice issue that we need real action on and solutions to.
There are huge externalized health-related costs with wood heating, which have been quantified in several studies. A recent Australian study, for example, found that each wood stove annually increases medical costs by the current USD equivalent of around $7,000.
As one study that looked at externalized costs of wood heating put it:
“Wood burners as well as the general public must understand that these localized spikes in wood smoke inhalation create an unjustifiable concentration of risk, particularly to vulnerable groups such as elders and children, i.e. environmental injustice. Furthermore, the public and those most vulnerable would benefit from a greater public recognition of the particularly harmful effects triggered by the various chemical species found in wood smoke.” (The link to that can be found at https://www.dsawsp.org/health/real-cost-of…)
It doesn’t all go up the chimney. It has been estimated that wood stove users reduce their life expectancies by about 12 years on average. Aside from increased risk of cancer, asthma, and COPD, wood stoves have been linked to things like more heart attacks in seniors, and to a higher likelihood of developing dementia. One study found a 74 percent increased risk of dementia for the wood stove user, with a 55 percent increased risk for the non-wood-burning neighbors.
Without a doubt, seniors in Humboldt need more money for medicine and in-home care as a direct consequence of wood heating.
Wood heating can contribute to, as a pulmonologist in Oregon put it, a “catastrophic downward spiral” for individual health and family finances, as well as affect community economic wellbeing. (https://www.multco.us/multnomah-county/new…)
The wood stove industry in this country aggressively lobbies and works in tandem with the gas industry to fight climate and air quality legislation. This country’s biggest wood burning industry lobbying group runs a government affairs academy in DC to teach their members how to lobby, promote misinformation, and fight against clean air and climate legislation. They are very similar to the tobacco industry in the tactics that they use. Nobody is thumbing their nose at corporate misdeeds by promoting wood heating.
Surprise, surprise. Looks like someone is underestimating how bad wood smoke pollution is (again), pretending that it is less harmful because it is “natural”. I am sick of these cranks with their anti-scientific thinking, Objectively wood smoke pollution is very bad indeed. The evidence of harm is very clear and the only logical policy position is that burning wood should be banned. If you don’t agree go and learn more about the harms to human health that the chemicals in wood smoke cause,. Wood smoke kills people, and causes many serious diseases. It is crank anti-scientific thinking to pretend otherwise.
If you have a wood stove or heater in your home, simply get rid of it. You and your neighbors will live longer.
There’s nothing “unscientific” in that editorial…the author conceades the toxicity.
When condemning behaviors that help the poor survive, without feasible alternatives, one risks, at best, exposing their ignorance and at worst, their class-bigotry.
With few exceptions, and with many alternatives, individual’s contibutions to today’s catastrophic environmental and climate crises is commensurate with their wealth.
Only one thing, it isn’t the poor wood burning. It is the middle class. They cite ‘costs’ but that is a lie. They do it for the ‘asthetics’. They are completely ignorant, or don’t care about the harm it is doing, and just laugh at you when you say it is making you ill. That shows their vile character, and motives. I am sorry, but as a por, disabled, single mother that lives off only $700 a month, well below the poverty line, and struggles to pay basic bills or eat, yet somehow does NOT manage to burn wood, I call these liars out. There are tons of alternatives, and if I feel cold, I wear a coat, use an electric blanket, something, anything. But burning something is never a consideration, because I’m not an idiot who wants to off myself, and others….I am done with the excuses, because that is all they are. I am being poisoned daily for months by multiple neighbour’s smoke, whom are all well off financially. They don’t care about us, and I sure do not care about them. Ban all wood burning, end of. Enough is enough, this is California, and allowing burning with increased wildfires no less, is beyond a joke, and criminal. All they care about is ‘offending’ home owners who want to burn….who cares about them?? I do not give one damn about what privileges people want, or them trying to save money, allegedly. Health, and wellbeing is far more important than that.