A new study shows that cutting down trees for paper, furniture, and fuel emits three times more carbon than flying.

The paper is here

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38 points

What’s the point of comparing it to flying? That’s completely meaningless. There’s no possible building material that is “climate friendly” while we’re still using fossil fuels for industry and construction. The only question of significance here is wether wood is more sustainable than other forms of building material. They make no attempt to make a comparison to the ecological impact of metal or concrete production.

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6 points
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I agree, that comparison is about as useful apples vs. lamp bulbs.

As a construction material, wood is almost certainly less taxing on the environment.

A lot of paper gets discarded sooner than a year after printing / writing, consumer goods may last a decade, but houses are built to last 50 years.

While a wooden house still stands, the land where its material grew may easily become re-forested, and the service life of houses can be prolonged - with maintenance, a house can last a century and there exist wooden houses many centuries old.

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4 points

Right? I was thinking they would be comparing to plastic since those are the trade offs in grocery stores these days. The building materials you mentioned also make sense.

Flying, on the other hand…

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