'About That Wood Smoke' 

Editor:

Developing solutions to self-destructive human behaviors requires deeper and broader understanding of complex motivations (Mailbox, Sept. 14).

While both destructive and toxic, domestic firewood heating is arguably less devastating than "fracked" natural gas (poisoning diminishing sources of fresh, clean water for entire communities).

Humboldt County's large population of low-income seniors and disabled, with access to firewood, mitigate PG&E's corrupt, outdated monopoly, freeing money needed for medicine, in-home care, rent, food and transportation.

Energy utility costs could decline if publicly-owned. Until phased-out, natural gas reserves could be restricted to domestic-use, instead of being exported to the highest international bidders, driving up prices.

Until then, Trinidad residents can mitigate impacts of firewood by composing a draft city ordinance limiting time-of-use for wood stoves, or, present a civics lesson plan to Trinidad students willing to take a petition door-to-door, (providing memorable, project-based, experiential learning in the complexities surrounding energy, corruption, firewood and Trinidad's stark class divisions).

Just a century ago America's comfortable-class began filling rural communities with noisy, smoky, polluting, unregulated and deadly "horseless carriages" manufactured thousands of miles away, despite widespread opposition as community's horse-based economies collapsed.

Who among thousands of local residents with an acre or more will be first to build a solar array and sell cheaper energy to their neighbors? Who will be first to learn from Scandinavian and European entrepreneurs taking back public streets with bicycles and mass-produced, peddle-assist "pod bikes" fulfilling 90 percent of student, worker and retiree's daily commutes?

Local financial institutions and public officials have leadership responsibilities to shift priorities, incentives, policies and investments to alternative energy sources and products that can be manufactured locally to prepare for the future; an imperative that local and national vested interests in outdated, self-destructive industries continue to neglect and oppose.

George Clark, Eureka