{"id":1092,"date":"2009-09-30T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T15:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/09\/30\/burn-bans-too-much-government-or-too-little\/"},"modified":"2009-09-30T11:51:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T15:51:00","slug":"burn-bans-too-much-government-or-too-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2009\/09\/30\/burn-bans-too-much-government-or-too-little\/","title":{"rendered":"Burn bans: too much government or too little?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>David Sommerstein <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northcountrypublicradio.org\/news\/story\/14440\/ins-and-outs-of-new-burn-ban\">reported again<\/a> on the looming ban on most forms of domestic burning, a restriction that will extend from household garbage to seasonal burning of yard and field waste.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of people in the North Country are furious.  Burn barrels are a familiar part of the landscape here.<\/p>\n<p>I think this debate raises an interesting set of questions, challenging those who want more government services and those who want a more libertarian society.<\/p>\n<p>There is universal scientific consensus that burning garbage in your backyard is seriously bad for the environment and human health.  This from the website of New York&#8217;s DEC:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Burning about 10 pounds a day of trash in a household burn barrel may produce as much air pollution as a modern, well-controlled incinerator burning 400,000 pounds a day of trash.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ick.  But in many North Country communities, there is no municipal garbage collection. <\/p>\n<p>People rely on private garbage companies, they haul their own trash to the dump, they dump illegally, or they burn.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s interesting to me is that the private sector and the government have both failed to find affordable and convenient alternatives.<\/p>\n<p>Government stayed out of the way, but that didn&#8217;t seem to produce any cool, libertarian solutions. <\/p>\n<p>So no we&#8217;re now banning a common form of trash disposal, without giving many low-income families in remote rural areas a viable option.<\/p>\n<p>I think it&#8217;s kind of a microcosm of the conundrum that we face on a larger, national scale. <\/p>\n<p>People are leery of paying more in taxes, or footing the bill for bigger government, even when there are serious problems that need fixing. <\/p>\n<p>But we&#8217;re not sure what to do when no other solutions materialize.<\/p>\n<p>What are your thoughts?  Is this a case where government needs to step in?  If not, then what happens to all the trash?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Sommerstein reported again on the looming ban on most forms of domestic burning, a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}