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I have seen pictures of the area I now live from the early 1900’s and there is nary a tree to be seen, all pasture. Now the same area is so thickly wooded you need a compass to navigate. Actually there is more forest now than there has ever been since the area was settled.

Teddy Roosevelt started the national parks system because the national appetite for wood threatened to deforest the entire country, with 1900 levels of population and energy consumption. If we tried to sustain our current energy consumption levels using wood, or other forms of biomass, we’d be deforested in a generation. (May well happen anyway.)

Pollution is a legitimate “neighborhood” effect. Historically, wood burning hasn’t been regulated because “everyone” did it and we all recognized that tolerating others soot and ash was the price we paid for staying warm in the winter.

I wonder why coal hasn’t made a comeback? My family used coal in Queens as recently as 1960. (We still had an icebox in Manhattan as recently as 1954. No refrigerator. The iceman lugged a huge block of ice up several flights of steps a couple times a week.) Coal has a lot of the drawbacks of wood. In the 1950’s the coal truck was a common sight rumbling down the street and dumping a barrel or two of anthracite down the coal chute into the basement.

"Actually there is more forest now than there has ever been since the area was settled."

I can't cite you a statistical source, but a few years ago I was told by someone (in a position to know, and with no incentive to lie) that the United States presently has a greater percentage of forestation than at the time Lewis and Clark conducted their exploration of the American west.