EPA Makes Most Wood Stoves Illegal

First time accepted submitter Jody Bruchon writes "The Environment Protection Agency has lowered the amount of fine-particle matter per cubic meter that new wood stoves are allowed to release into the atmosphere by 20%. Most wood stoves in use today are of the type that is now illegal to manufacture or sell, and old stoves traded in for credit towards new ones must be scrapped out. This shouldn't be much of a surprise since more and more local governments are banning wood-burning stoves and fireplaces entirely, citing smog and air pollution concerns."

Comments

Re:Good

[BronsCon]

You're only putting back into the atmosphere a fraction of what the tree you're burning pulled out; it's not like you're creating new carbon. Fossil fuels aren't new carbon, either, but they are carbon that has been sequestered from the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands, or millions, of years, whereas a tree will cycle a large amount of the carbon it takes in as CO2 back into the ground in the form of fruit/nuts and leaves (as they decompose), only sequestering a small overall portion of that, and only for the relatively (compared to fossil fuels) short life of the tree.

When you're considering the effects of wood burning on the overall amount of carbon compounds in the atmosphere, the effect of burning wood is almost immeasurable, since the carbon released came from the atmosphere originally and will be reabsorbed by other trees, anyway.