Firewood Banks aren’t inspiring. They’re a sign of collapse.

I was pretty annoyed by several aspects of this article. I think my biggest issue is that the evidence it's citing is quite overwrought. Here's an example:

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.

But if you click on the "power goes out" link, here's the title and first sentence:

Data from over 15 million consumers in 588 counties across the nation reveal that poorer communities waited an average of 170 minutes more for power to be restored, though sometimes it took much longer. Electricity is essential to just about everyone – rich and poor, old and young. Yet, when severe storms strike, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities often wait longest to recover.

It's not about rural communities losing power, it's about how it takes poorer communities an average of 170 minutes longer to get power back after storms (hurricanes specifically). And the source goes on to provide an explanation:

One likely reason for this disparity is written into utilities’ standard storm recovery policies. Often, these polices prioritize critical infrastructure first when restoring power after an outage, then large commercial and industrial customers. They next seek to recover as many households as they can as quickly as possible.

While this approach may seem procedurally fair, these recovery routines appear to have an unintended effect of often making vulnerable communities wait longer for electricity to be restored. One reason may be that these communities are farther from critical infrastructure, or they may be predominantly in older neighborhoods where power infrastructure requires more significant repairs.

...

Then if you click the link "the profit," here's the main point:

This week, PG&E gave as short as a few hours’ notice in some areas as they readied for a “Public Safety Power Shutoff” that could last up to 5 days. On Wednesday morning, darkness began to descend on 513,000 PG&E customers in Northern California. The power outage, according to PG&E, is a preventative measure in order to address safety issues during fire season, in which electricity is often a culprit. In the San Francisco Bay area and in and around the Sacramento Valley and foothills, the National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning — the most severe of its kind — for weather conditions that can fuel an intense wildfire.

A second batch of 234,000 residents, including in the San Francisco East Bay, is expected to lose power during a second phase of shutoffs this evening around 8 pm. PG&E wildfire safety expert Sumeet Singh said the decision to cut electricity to customers in 34 California counties is “a last resort.” Some customers could be without power for five days, as every inch of the power lines have to be deemed as safe before electricity is restored.

(The argument is basically that they should've invested more beforehand so they wouldn't need to do this.)

The whole article is like this, and it's journalistic malpractice. If firewood banks were a sign of collapse, you shouldn't need to rely on bait-and-switches like this to make your point.

This seems more of a "city people are out of touch with country people" story than a "people are getting poorer" story. Buying and selling firewood is something commonly done in rural areas. Trees have to be taken down sometimes and selling the firewood is a way to recoup the cost.

I guess the new thing is having an organized way to give it away? It seems like this would normally be done informally, like putting free stuff on Craigslist.

I don't understand how burning firewood is supposed to be a sign of collapse. A wood-burning stove is a common, inexpensive way to heat a house that will appeal to people who are frugal-minded. My father put in a wood-burning stove in the 1970's because our house was all-electric and electricity prices were going up. (As a kid I didn't like it because bringing in firewood was a chore we had to do.)

Nowadays I wouldn't do it because we live in a suburb and I don't like the idea of polluting the neighborhood. Gas heat is cleaner if if you can get it.

Great article. I feel like the Foundation books do a good job illustrating this "slow collapse" concept, if you're a person who likes to draw parallels between life and art. Nothing falls apart all at once, and many people might never even realize a collapse is happening if they are lucky enough to be insulated from its most obvious effects. It occurs to me that, ironically and sadly, the US is very slowly recreating the living conditions of the Soviet Union.

This feels like it's fighting a strawman. I did a cursory google and found mostly articles by local news which were like 4 sentences and mostly an advertisement/call to action, e.g "X are accepting donations for their firewood bank. Please donate if you have spare firewood".

The news from major outlets are like https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/climate/wood-banks-winter-maine.html, which is pretty somber and not particularly a celebration of anything.