I was reading an article on-line about how several cities in Montana will not be compliance with new air quality standards. I was somewhat taken aback by this, as it is hard to believe that Montana would have poor air quality given that it does not appear to be overly industrialized and it has an image of having clean, open spaces. Yet, when I read the article further, I learned that one of the culprits is wood boilers that some residents use for heating homes (or perhaps, businesses).

Once upon a time, these boilers might have been okay in areas that did not have good access to infrastructure needed to provide heat. With these boilers, a rural home could generate its own heat and be somewhat self-sufficient. When I first heard about such boilers I thought, how bad can they be? After all, we burn wood in fireplaces and no one complains? Also, isn't wood at least a natural substance to burn? Yet, after encountering one of these boilers, I realize now why many places are banning them, including Vanderburgh County, where Evansville, Indiana sits. These boilers create a lot of smoke and consequently, particulate matter. I see a home on my drive each day, which is in Warrick County, Indiana, adjacent to Vanderburgh County. Warrick does not have a ban on these boilers. You can see and smell the smoke from this one boiler all the way down the road. I can only imagine what particulate matter this one boiler generates and how if every home in the area used the same type of heat source, we'd have even worse air pollution problems.

In my opinion, these boilers should be completely banned, except perhaps in the very most remote places. Yet, I still wonder whether I am being hypocritical. This home is, after all, self-sufficient for heat and is not relying on coal or natural gas to do the trick. Isn't it good that it is using a renewable resource--wood--for heat, rather than an exhaustible fossil fuel? Unless we heat our own homes with solar power, are we being disingenous by saying that this home is dirtying the air to make heat? People burn campfires all the time and no one has a problem with that, so what makes this home's use of wood so bad? Yet, after considering this issue further, I still feel that these boilers should be banned, since the amount of smoke and particulates generated in a residential neighborhood are just too great. Why should the families next door have to deal with this? While all homes create some pollution when fossil fuels are used for heat, the effect on neighboring homes is nothing like it is when a wood boiler is used. However, with this debate, I have to remember that the lesser of the two evils is one thing, but no home is really heating cleanly unless a truly pollution-free source like the sun is being used. On a day like today, when there is not a cloud in the sky, I still wonder why all of this solar power is just going to waste.