Given the health impact, these burners should be seized and replaced with almost anything else, with full financial assistance. (Why? It's cheaper to replace these burners than it is to suffer the long term public health costs caused by their existence).
Generally speaking, we should only allow the government to intervene in personal freedoms when there is a compelling interest, and we should expect that the interventions are tailored to be as minimal as possible. A compelling reason existing is no excuse to give the government unlimited powers, for fairly obvious reasons.
For corporations, this obviously means complying with a robust regulatory framework; if I own a company that sells wood burning stoves, then I have to comply with EPA regulations around how many grams per hour of soot it may emit when properly maintained. In exchange for having to keep up with the changing regulations, the government should provide reasonable timelines and clarity around what is expected.
As a private citizen, this means accepting some limitations on how we use our private property. As a citizen I can legally purchase a car, own a firearm, and consume alcohol, but if I decide to use all three at once I will probably lose my right to have all three, plus I'll get locked in jail. Occasionally changing regulatory requirements will mean that certain pieces of equipment can't be operated anymore; if you had a car that had to use leaded fuel (not a substitute), then it would effectively be illegal to operate it going forward. What is not fine is for the government to say "your car needs leaded fuel, so we are going to seize it from you".
The government should not be in the business of seizing private property that may be used to violate the law, especially when it was purchased legally. We don't do pre-crime in this country, owning something that may be used to violate the law is not a crime punishable by loss of private property. We also have constitutional protections against ex post facto laws; you cannot punish a citizen for what they purchased back when it was legal. If it's necessary to put strict limits on pollution and fine users who exceed them, that is fine by me. I'd even be happy to pay a bit more in taxes to fund optional buybacks and incentives to help users buy newer and more efficient units. But proposing that the government go and seize private property that may be used to eventually break some new regulation is beyond the pale.
I recently heard about this nonprofit that is helping people retrofit their homes and get rid of wood burning stoves.
Wood is far cheaper than alternatives, often even free (e.g., a neighbor cuts down a tree, you get rid of it for them). Financial assistance is onerous to obtain.
You're also assuming it's appropriate for some government beurocrat to make such a decision on the first place. "It's my woodstove, you can't have it."
China banned the country from getting pallets of plastic because once they factored in the public health costs, it wasn't profitable (and it was barely profitable before hand).
The government bans people from driving while drunk because they have a potential to hurt others. We have precedence for the government limiting various freedoms for the safety of others. For example, in most of the US you can't smoke when there are others nearby or when indoors.
A better parallel would be fining based on emissions, which I would be fine with. But actually seizing private property? Hell no.
Yeah like your car being seized due to not paying the yearly registration fee?
Again, laws around how property is used are fine. There are all kinds of ways you can misuse your property that will result in it being taken from you; in general all of us are fine with that. It's legal to drink, and it's legal to drive, but if you drink and drive you might lose property or your freedom, probably both.
What's not fine is the government saying "you purchased this legally and in good faith, but it's not legal anymore and we're going to need to take that". This feels like a good idea when it's something with obvious negative externalities, but it is a wildly dangerous power to give the government. Especially since this power will almost certainly be delegated to the executive branch by the legislature, giving random un-elected appointees the ability to expropriate property without even a hint of deliberation.
Oh, and it's probably an ex post facto issue anyways. You generally can't punish people for something that was legal at the time that they did it. This is why various gun regulations almost always exclude all banned items that are currently in private hands, because attempts to take that property away would be unconstitutional.
This actually depends on the jurisdiction. In many of them not having an active registration/inspection is grounds to having your vehicle seized. Even if it's only used on private roads.
> What's not fine is the government saying "you purchased this legally and in good faith, but it's not legal anymore and we're going to need to take that". This feels like a good idea when it's something with obvious negative externalities, but it is a wildly dangerous power to give the government. Especially since this power will almost certainly be delegated to the executive branch by the legislature, giving random un-elected appointees the ability to expropriate property without even a hint of deliberation.
Sure, except if compensation isn't offered.
The government currently does this all the time, it's actually how many "public" offices fund themselves.
Where is the outrage of this happening right now? We've already crossed that line.
> You generally can't punish people for something that was legal at the time that they did it.
We also do this currently. It's called not having clear laws and having to argue in court and creating new precedent.
And "punish" only works if you're not offered compensation. If the government says "hey as your representatives we're going to ban xyz for this health reason, and provide compensation for buying them back from you" then it's fine.
Again I'm not saying the government should waste resources going and finding wood burning systems and seizing them. However the government can ban the operation of it.
[Citation needed]
In all jurisdictions I've lived, you can put your vehicle into "planned non-operation" status, where it no longer requires registration.
> Where is the outrage of this happening right now? We've already crossed that line.
I find civil asset forfeiture outrageous. There you go. We've discussed it a lot here, and most of us hate it and see it as nothing more than legalized theft.
> And "punish" only works if you're not offered compensation. If the government says "hey as your representatives we're going to ban xyz for this health reason, and provide compensation for buying them back from you" then it's fine.
Compensation for a buy back is very different from compensation for seizure. From a policy perspective a buy back is probably a great idea, but let's not pretend that it's anywhere near the same legal ballpark as seizure, even with compensation.
> Again I'm not saying the government should waste resources going and finding wood burning systems and seizing them. However the government can ban the operation of it.
It's worth pointing out that banning ownership and banning operation are very different beasts. Leaded gasoline is illegal (well, for cars); if you have a car that for whatever reason needed leaded gasoline then operating it is illegal. But it's not illegal to own a car that requires leaded gasoline. The legal leap from "you can't run this because it will hurt people" to "you can't own a thing that was once legal and now isn't because you might use it and that would hurt people" is immense.
For the record, I'm fine in principle with banning inefficient fireplaces, although I think that such a ban would be effectively impossible to enforce. I think that optional buybacks for inefficient wood burners and incentives to upgrade to (increasingly tightly regulated) stoves is a good policy move. What I don't support is the leap from "this thing is bad, and therefore we should make it illegal for you to own". That is an immensely bad habit to get into, for the reasons I've mentioned above.
If your wood burning is proven to increase the risk of cancer for your neighbours, what does that mean?
Drunk driving generates more obvious and immediate effects, but burning a wood stove or fireplace can still harm others.