Lots of small forest fires are better than a few huge forest fires. Without human intervention forest fires should be frequent but small. When humans prevent all fires the fuel accumulates and eventually turns into a huge fire that cannot be controlled and does more damage than a lot of little fires combined. The idea of controlled fires deliberately set by humans is to simulate nature without allowing random fires in inhabited areas.

I don’t know the reasoning behind your local laws. But that’s the reasoning behind controlled forest fires.

There are two different, competing environmental issues here:

1. Humans burning things releases carbon into the atmosphere, which has raised the average global temperature and caused issues around the world. That's why you're not supposed to burn wood, it releases more CO2 into the atmosphere and makes it worse.

2. Forests naturally have occasional fires without human intervention. There are parts of that ecosystem which rely on having a fire happen every so often (for example, some pine cones do not open up and spread their seeds unless exposed to fire). Humans however don't like forest fires because they sometimes spread to their homes and businesses, so historically they've been suppressed as far as possible. This has had a negative effect on those ecosystems that are dependent on occasional fires.

In other words: some plants and animals will die out without some forest fires. We want to stop this. It does release carbon into the atmosphere, but it's deemed an acceptable tradeoff for the forest ecosystem continuing to exist. However, humans burning wood is not necessary for them to continue to exist, and the mass burning of wood may actually harm humanity's chances of continuing to exist. So that practice is regulated.

Both are bad for humans in terms of the smoke generated.

For the forest environment, many forests rely on naturally occurring forest fires as part of its normal life cycle. Some trees and plants only have their seeds erupt when exposed to fire or the aftermath of fires. Fire helps clear out the underbrush regularly while older trees survive with little damage.

However, once humans start living near forests, they don't want them to catch on fire. Fires are stopped before they can clean out the forest. They also start diverting all the water elsewhere and cut down the old large trees for their own usage.

Now we have dry conditions and an overgrowth of underbrush due to a lack of fires. This makes any forest fire much larger and hotter, able to burn even the largest trees that typically survive fires.

The reason firewood is banned indoors is not because of its carbon. (All firewood is carbon low, because the tree got it out of the air, but getting it to you probably used gas) Firewood is bad because it both causes chimney fires, and contains large particulates that lower air quality. Think cancer causing smoke.

> That's why you're not supposed to burn wood, it releases more CO2 into the atmosphere and makes it worse.

It only releases the carbon dioxide that the tree itself took out of the atmosphere while growing. That carbon is part of the current carbon cycle.

Coal and other fossil fuels are the problem. The carbon there has been out of the loop for so long that life's carbon cycle has adjusted for its absence.

There are a couple of reasons why wood burning might be banned.

Some towns are located in valleys that retain smoke, so if a lot of the residents burn firewood as fuel all the time, the whole town is continuously cloaked in smoke. That's bad for everyone's health. Forest fires are short term events that last a few days and then end.

Forest fires may have some benefits but they also destroy homes and kill people, and firepits might be banned where you live in case you accidentally start a larger wild fire, if you are in a high risk area. Controlled fires are only set in areas and at times of the season where they can be closely monitored and controlled and hopefully not end up creating a disaster.

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Wood is still a problem if it was taken from a recently deforested area (or transported long-distance, but that's true of everything). When taken from a local wood farm, then it's carbon-neutral, yeah.

So if I felled my own trees and they are the source of the wood I am burning (which is the case here), is my burning carbon-neutral?

It will be carbon neutral in a few decades if you plant new trees to replace them. Otherwise, no.

I wouldn't stress about it too much, though; wood burning is not why the climate is changing, and climate change isn't why wood burning is illegal in your county.

> wood burning is illegal in your county.

Illegal?!? I've not heard of that before. In what countries is it illegal to burn wood?

County, not country. A minor municipal area that probably only covers a couple small cities and suburbs.

You'll have to ask OP which one, though. Probably multiple, there are over a thousand counties in the US

> County, not country.

Ah! Gotcha. I guess I had a leftover R from last talk-like-a-pirate day, and it chose this moment to escape.

Yes, counties and municipalities can have bylaws banning wood burning, especially in hot, dry seasons and in dense sub-divisions. OP will have to consult his local town council (or equivalent) to get an explanation - probably an anti-nuisance bylaw, though.

> So if I felled my own trees

or use deadfall when possible.