Common sense in short supply at the EPA.

Civil fines could be assessed in coming days against residential polluters (those who use wood-burning stoves) in the cities of Fairbanks and North Pole, according to The New York Times.

The E.P.A. could soon declare the Alaskan cities to be in “serious” noncompliance of the Clean Air Act, with potentially huge economic implications, including the loss of federal transportation funding.

If you don’t keep the fire lit, you die

“Like most people in Alaska, the residents of those frozen cities are burning wood to keep themselves warm this winter,” writes dissenter John Daniel Davidson.

“The problem is, there’s no replacement for wood-burning stoves in Alaska’s interior,” says Davidson. “Heating oil is too expensive for a lot of people, and natural gas isn’t available. So they’ve got to burn something. The average low temperature in Fairbanks in December is 13 degrees below zero (-25C). In January, it’s 17 below (-27C). During the coldest days of winter, the high temperature averages -2 degrees (-19C), and it can get as cold as -60 (-51C).

“This is not a place where you play games with the cold. If you don’t keep the fire lit, you die. For people of modest means, and especially for the poor, that means you burn wood in a stove—and you keep that fire lit around the clock.

Davidson grew up in Alaska and learned from an early age that “firewood was as natural and necessary as food and water.”

“What the EPA doesn’t accept, or even grasp, is man’s place in the universe: in the face of Alaska’s deadly cold interior, there’s only so much we can do. So we build a fire.”

Read all of this great commentary:

http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/30/epa-alaskans-sub-zero-temps-stop-burning-wood-keep-warm/

Thanks to Stephen Bird for this link