Climate Conscience Man Broke Up with His Wood Fire
- Gregory Andrews
- Oct 3, 2025
- 2 min read
Climate Conscience Man loves a good fire. Always has.
There’s something about the flicker, the crackle, the ritual of chopping and stacking the wood. It makes winter feel warmer - not just physically, but emotionally. It’s part of the vibe.
So when his family kept gently suggesting it might be time to move on from the wood heater, he resisted. For a while.
But then he read more. Talked to a few experts. Learned just how damaging wood smoke can be - not just for the climate, but for the people breathing it in.
In cities and towns across Australia, domestic wood heaters are now one of the biggest sources of harmful air pollution. They emit fine particulate matter (PM2.5), which gets deep into our lungs and bloodstream and is linked to heart disease, asthma, lung cancer, and stroke. In fact, wood smoke accounts for over 40% of PM2.5 pollution in some Australian urban areas - more than cars and trucks combined in winter.
The stats were hard to ignore. So was this:
According to Boston University’s Climate and Health Policy brief, burning wood emits more CO₂ per unit of energy than coal, and the idea that it’s “carbon neutral” just doesn’t stack up - especially not in the short timeframe we need to act.
So last winter, Climate Conscience Man made the call. Out went the wood heater. In came a reverse-cycle heat pump, powered by solar panels on the roof and a battery in the evenings.
He thought he’d miss the fire more than he did. Two winters in, it turns out the warmth, ease, and cleaner air have more than made up for it.
He still enjoys the occasional fire when he’s out bush. Climate Conscience Man isn’t anti-wood in principle - but in dense suburbs with rising emissions and rising asthma, it was the right choice.
Yes he misses the fire. But the satisfaction of knowing he’s reducing the impacts on others of air pollution more than makes up for that. Besides, his dog Fred likes lying under the split system now. And he also has an Onkaparinga electric throw rug!
Climate Conscience Man would do well to apply his logic of ending wood fires in favour of clean energy heating to ending consumption of animal products to plant based food.Personal satisfaction for doing the right thing.
Anyone who cares about sentient beings in farming and the torture inflicted on them throughout their miserable unnatural lives so their body parts and secretions can be processed to satisfy human dietary tastes will refuse to be part of the system..Cognitive dissonance is rampant in our consumer society.Look up Animals Australia to learn the truth.
Vegan Australia has designed a plant foods education program for schools to counteract the dominance of animal industries in children's nutrition belief systems. Did you know this: A co…