by Jeff Davis

There appears to be yet more legal craziness from San Francisco, which recently introduced the first gender-free ID cards (for the benefit of “transgender” people). A recent news article tells us “Under the auspices of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, public hearings are being held to determine the fate of the family hearth. Those of us who live in rural areas have a pretty good idea what the outcome is going to be….Are the fires in our homes bad because they add to global warming? Release carbon dioxide into the air? Pollute the atmosphere with soot and particulate matter? All of the above?”

Yes, San Francisco is apparently planning on banning fireplaces in private homes. Never mind the fact that most people enjoy a nice warm fire especially to offset the cool, moist climate of the Bay area. A recent power outage after a major storm in the Pacific Northwest last winter left hundreds of thousands of people without power. Some folks had their electricity shut off for more than six days. Many people who use gas for heating were still out of luck because their central-heating systems wouldn’t work unless an electric fan was working. A fireplace may be a good back up for increasingly unreliable government infrastructure.

The news article asks “Where is the research? The Chronicle reported that ‘government studies’ indicate that 33 percent of all ‘particulate matter’ comes from your fireplace and mine. With all the industry and all the cars in the Bay Area, does anyone actually believe that? Shouldn’t we be given more quantitative information such as how many fireplaces are there in the nine counties? How many are used each night? How many hours is each fireplace used? How much ‘particulate matter’ is expelled from each fire? How many parts per million are in the air? How much dissipates into the atmosphere?”

I’m sure there are arrogant city officials who would respond: “Research! We don’t need no stinkin’ research!”

The same article notes “Those of us in rural communities feel bullied by this sort of nanny state legislation. We’d like to believe that a man’s home is indeed his castle. Most of us live in small towns or the country for a reason. We don’t like cities. We don’t like traffic. We don’t like noise. We don’t like the dirty air.Our air is clean, and we take umbrage when someone says our fires are polluting their air.”

What would happen if, one day, all of us simply decided to stop being afraid of government, and we simply stood up and said out loud what we feel in our hearts, in all our millions? If the endless Iraq war and the general sickness of society won’t do it, what will? Maybe these irritating petty dictates like banning fireplaces will finally tip the scale and make us stop being afraid.