Firewood Banks Aren't Inspiring. They're a Sign of Collapse
newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com
But this article has a certain feeling of contempt for hicks doing something as backwards as burning wood for warmth. Maybe it sticks out to me because I'm in Canada, where a significant % of all households (of all social classes) rely on wood. Because wood happens to be the cheapest source of heat. The fact that we burn wood is not a sign of industrial decay or primitiveness. It's a sign of there being a lot of trees and logging around these parts.
But at the same time, yes, it is associated with poverty. Wood smoke is unhealthy. And wood heat one of the highest rates of injury or fire in terms of home heating. Some people resort to it out of desperation, particularly junk wood and garbage that shouldn't even be burned. But not necessarily so. Back to the point of the article: is there quantified evidence that use of wood for heat is increasing in America among the poor? Or is this based on the author's impressions?
Indeed. I wish that were the point of the article. However, in my opinion, this article is unfortunately much more of an emotional/political rant than a conveyor of useful information.
I generally agree with your comment (see my other comment on this article), but I think a big problem with this article is that it doesn't do the work of substantiating things like whether the volunteers in question are actually chopping wood with axes. I would guess that big pile in the picture was made by a volunteer who already owns a firewood business with a firewood processor.
Headlines like this are so commonplace these days I instinctively avoid them. They're telling you what your opinion should be, not educating you so you can make an informed decision.
It's easy to say "this article is trash and move on." Lets do the hard way and talk about the topic instead of the piece specifically. Please try to be curious.
HN Search: "by:dang intellectual curiosity" - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Related:
Wood banks in Maine are increasing and so is the need for heat - https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/11/21/hancock/increased... - November 21st, 2025
Residential Heating Fuel Sources in Maine - https://www.maine.gov/energy/sites/maine.gov.energy/files/in... - October 2024
Alliance for Green Heat: Funding for Firewood Banks - https://www.firewoodbanks.org/
Maine Wood Banks Network - https://woodbanks.org/explore-our-network
National Wood Bank Project - https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/woodbanks/
The core assumption, I suppose, is that this is a sign of collapse because the systems and institutions worked before.
Unfortunately for the author, it's evident that they never did. The gaps were merely papered over by cheap propane and heating oil.
* The number of wood banks are increasing in Maine because of rising cost of living meaning residents can't afford the $300/cord anymore and because of cuts to the LIHEAP program.
* Wood banks function identically to food banks except it's for heat. A rise in the number of food banks as well as a rise in demand from food banks is a natural signal of economic conditions on the ground.
* Just like food banks, these wood banks are a source of community for the participants. Volunteering at a food bank stocking pantries and putting together bags with your friends is actually kind of fun which is where the heartwarming angle comes from.
* If you believe that it shouldn't be the community's job to come together to provide their neighbors food and heat and that's what government is supposed to be for then this reasonably looks like a failing.
* This government failing combined with the economic conditions that necessitate additional assistance signaling a downward spiral is broadly the author's thesis.
* Some general additional context: heating your home with wood is actually pretty great. It's often cheaper than other sources of heat, it's a form of renewable energy (and actually qualified for the Biden tax credit because of it) and there are high efficiency stoves that get the wood burning "clean" as well as tip the economics even more in favor of wood.
I dug into the figures behind some of the claims made in the article and they seem a bit hyperbolic, for instance:
>You don’t start a wood bank in a country with functioning institutions. You start one when heating assistance programs can’t keep up, when the grid flickers every time the wind shifts, when propane and heating oil costs swing so hard that families can’t budget more than a week out.
The linked articles cite a 8.4-16.4% price increase for natural gas, and a decrease of 4% and 5% for heating oil and propane respectively. While I understand some people might be living paycheck to paycheck, characterizing this as "costs swing so hard that families can’t budget more than a week out" is a stretch. At the very least the author could not mention "heating oil" when it decreased in price?
Other parts of the article are equally misleading. For instance
>Rural families don’t get to pretend. They know exactly what it means when the power goes out for the third time in a month and the utility company shrugs because the profit isn’t there to fix it.
That gives you the impression that electricity companies are refusing to fix broken electricity grids, leaving people to freeze, but the first link is actually a story about people being disconnected after they don't pay their bills, and the second is about lack of maintenance for California's grid. Both are vaguely related to the original claim, but are cited in a highly misleading way. While it's regrettable that customers are disconnected for bill non-repayment, you obviously can't also have an utility operate where there's no consequences for non-payment. And while PG&E should be raked over the coals for their lack of maintenance, it's a stretch to link it to people in the north east freezing.
Communal chopping of firewood is something I remember from like.... two decades ago?
Maybe it's less of a "collapse" thing, and more of a "we haven't invested enough time & resources to get better cheap distributed heating solutions that don't create so much pollution"?
Human volunteer power to cut down some local trees is a lot cheaper than, e.g., buying a geothermal installation, with solar and battery backup (battery backup would need to last for days in rural Maine if a winter storm breaks the solar).
It’s much easier to be poor in a city than in a rural area, when you move into an apartment you just start paying the various utilities and you get water and natural gas and your sewage is connected to a shared system. There’s no water pumps to replace or fuel deliveries.
People in rural communities are aging more rapidly than in more densely populated areas. Wood heat is more common in rural areas, and is more labor intensive if you're splitting it yourself.
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.
A wood bank is a functioning institution, you clown.
The point being pushed is valid - in this age, we as a society and in this country should have access to stable energy sources for heating, and somewhat stable prices to do so. If as this article implies, millions potentially cannot, and are needing to go to donation stations to be able to keep their home warm, then our governments are not meeting their obligations.
A food bank is a noble thing, but more people relying in it is obviously a sign of socio-economic decay. Food and heating in winter are literally the most basic humans needs, if you need free firewood you aren't doing well. It's not "cute" that grandma's pension doesn't cover food and a delivery of wood from a sawmill. People are nay-saying and flagging because realizing that your country is becoming poorer sucks ass, so "coastal elite" pearl clutching is easier.
Smells like LLM.
>You don’t start a [...]. You start one when [...]
and the title itself.
Hate AI writing style
Here in my Bavarian city I can get mangos explicitly labeled "flight mangos" ("Flugmangos" - German supermarket), for example. They look so much better than the regular ones, but at almost 10 Euros per piece I have not tried one yet since I still have dried mango pieces in the fridge.
Relevant: https://www.lufthansa-cargo.com/en/-/flying-fresh-12