[reducesuffering]

Most wood burning happens in more rural areas where people are harvesting the renewing resource on their own land, like fallen trees in winter. Many times, areas need to do controlled burns to prevent uncontrolled wild fires, and it's better to manage that burning for a purpose, useful heat, that lessens the heat needed from other energy sources that aren't renewable.

[cardiffspaceman]

In California’s mountains (Sierra Nevada range and similar) people who want to burn wood legally have to use pellets. The stoves that burn them are meant to comply with pollution regulations. People kinda don’t like them but they use them.

Montevideo didn’t seem like a place where suburbanites were burning wood of any form, but I was there in the summer, just for a day.

[reducesuffering]

Got any sources? I know many people, including a firefighter and sheriff, that burn wood outside on the many burn days, or use it in wood fireplaces.

Here's one such county ordinance https://www.tuolumnecounty.ca.gov/365/Burn-Program

[cardiffspaceman]

I have family in Mono County.

https://trademarkmammoth.com/woodstove-inserts-and-epa-compl...

Given that EPA regulations were cited, I assumed that the same rules apply everywhere. It seems instead that the harshest rules apply in one town.