I would like to respond to the letter “Wood is good” in the Gazette’s April 8 edition. Wood is good. I’ve been a carpenter most of my life and it is a great media. It is not good for burning. The letter writer makes the point that it has emissions equal to a conventional boiler that it is to replace. Replacing bad with bad is a bad idea. Even if the wood being used are the byproduct of normal tree cutting. That puts the trees’ imbedded carbon in the air very quickly.

If a tree falls and is left to rot, this would be a slow process taking years. Right now we need to slow down anything that adds carbon to our air. Pellets are worse and often involve intentionally cutting down trees. One can’t plant new trees to make our way out of the climate disaster. We need large trees right now. If you plant new ones they will be large trees in 40-50 years. That’s good but it is too late.

Trees we have are an important part of carbon removal. The letter writer seems to think that burning wood is OK because other elementary schools are burning wood. One of the things they teach in elementary schools is that just because Jimmy is doing a bad thing it’s not OK for Peter to do a bad thing. Poisoning the air, particularly around children, is a terrible idea. The Inflation Reduction Act will help pay for heat pumps or geothermal. It’s bad enough that our children have to deal with the climate crisis, let’s not poison them on the way to it.

John Howard

South Hadley

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