Working with Wood as a Sustainable Building Material

Wood from sustainable sources is a great favourite of green building specialists but I don't like it as a sustainable building material. Wood is a great material, with fantastic aesthetic qualities and great beauty. But as a source of sustainable building material, it failed to convince me, along with the all advocates of properly sourced wood from sustainably managed forests. For a start if you take it to its logical conclusion, wood maybe renewable, but how much wood would be enough to build or contribute to housing all over the world? Sustainable forests + unsustainable forests wouldn't go far enough, especially when good fertile land is at a premium and competing with food and low carbon fuels. No, wood is a bad idea for building houses. The wood would have to be intensively farmed, not taken from sustainably managed. Also, in the wider context wood is flammable and weaker when reacting to flooding, earthquakes and impacts, and so would be no good in a disaster proofing context.

I believe that wood should be removed as an option in sustainable building methods and materials. At this early stage I think it's fine, but governments all over the world are pushing sustainable building practices onto statute books and planning laws, so at some point there will be a cry from the green lobby to say enough is enough and when that happens wood from any source would not be an option.