this seems overly polemic. My parents live on a small farm and heat their home with firewood. My dad likes splitting wood, and it’s marginally cheaper since they own a plot of woodland. Although, they have a brand new heat pump they prefer to use their wood burning stove. It’s fairly common but in my experience it’s primarily a lifestyle choice not economic . People who chose to live out their also like the resiliency given their libertarian/prepper tendencies. it’s annoying because this entire piece is predicated on ignoring everything locals actually say.
I'm burning wood for primary heat, and I agree with the thrust of the article - despite its poor job of making the case with data or even anecdotes.
There is so much work fundamentally involved in handling firewood. It's much different to be burning wood when you have the resources to make handling it easier, or when you're doing it as a mere option for supplementary heat. For example, as I split (log splitter) or it gets delivered (from someone who owns a firewood processor), I stack it in IBC totes to sit around and season. I then move those with a tractor so they're right next to an outdoor wood boiler. So I basically touch each piece twice, with optionality for whether I am going to make a project of cutting down trees or just pay for it. Or I've got a few friends that get it all delivered, stack their own big wood piles, then move it to a smaller thing to carry it indoors, but only to supplement central heat which they keep lower.
Whereas when you're doing it out of necessity, and trying to conserve even then, there is just so much more human effort that gets used. It does make sense to view it in terms of societal collapse, or at the very least poverty. This fall, I saw a bunch of houses in denser areas - grapple loads delivered to tiny front yards, and they're out there making sense of it with just a chainsaw and hand tools. I presume they were going to burn it this winter, too. That doesn't seem like a good use of anyone's time, effort, or risk appetite.
A good litmus test: what kind of vehicles are people picking the wood from wood banks with? If there are a bunch of people loading their car trunks and whatnot every few days, that's not a good scene. If the same volunteers are delivering truckbeds (and stacking them) to needy older people who had burnt wood their entire life but are having trouble managing it now, that's less dire.
