Your Opinion: Bureaucrats seek limits on heating with wood

Dear Editor:

This diatribe is in reference to the article in Tuesday's (Feb. 24) newspaper on page one about proposed restrictions on wood-burning stoves.

I have long chafed under the condescension of the anointed intelligentsia in various circles of government. I usually suffer in silence, but in this proposal they take folly to a new low when they seek to restrict the simple burning of wood by which many of us non-anointed ones seek to warm ourselves. Those lofty politicians and bureaucrats pretend to care passionately about the poor huddled masses, but even a simpleton like me can see that wood heat is used disproportionately by those of limited means.

The anointed ones also champion the use of renewable resources. Pray tell, what is more renewable than a tree? Selective harvesting actually improves the productivity of healthy forests. Cutting, splitting and burning wood in a stove is an economical, healthy, fulfilling exercise in self-reliance, an old-fashioned concept the anointed ones puzzle over in bewilderment like a cow staring at a new gate.