Burn It Up?

- by Vic Ste­blin, Source: WoodBurnerSmoke.net

Humans have been burn­ing for much of his­to­ry. Africa burns its savan­na annu­al­ly and the smoke can be seen from space. Aus­tralia and Mediter­ranean areas reg­u­lar­ly burn off haz­ardous under­growth. Log­ging com­pa­nies burn off residue accord­ing to pro­fes­sion­al forestry codes. Ranch­ers and farm­ers burn old grass and crops to release nutrients.

Even light­ning by nature burns whole forests. Humans, fol­low­ing nature’s exam­ple, seem to love burn­ing.  Spring bon­fires are used to clear up old branch­es and yard waste. The burn­er bar­rel han­dled house­hold garbage until too much smoke was pro­duced by too many peo­ple. Wood burn­ers still dis­play their his­tor­i­cal right to burn any­where and any­time they please.

Times and con­di­tions change, how­ev­er, and humans every­where must recon­sid­er his­tor­i­cal tra­di­tions for a clean­er mod­ern soci­ety. We must leave some old things behind, edu­cate our­selves with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and use resources bet­ter. We should stop burn­ing things up.