I think it'd be a false dichotomy to suggest that if we weren't clear cutting rainforests and old growth forests with abandon we couldn't have wood for construction and would need to "build everything out of rocks and mud". I think that it's likely possible to harvest wood for construction sustainably and responsibly, but what we're doing today isn't that.
Well where do you think we would get the wood from? Where I am from, considered the logging capital of the world, it is sustainable. We also have very regulated industry that is managed by environmental bodies separate from the logging owners. People are so emotional about trees being cut down but I believe it is much like those who say oil industry is bad but continue to use products like plastic wrap and buy cheap plastic made fabrics in their clothing just as logging means housing, toilet paper, the boxes your items are shipped in, the paper we write on, the pallets your appliances are shipped on and on and on. Wood is a vital part of society like it or not and being emotional and disagreeing with that point is equal to head in the sand mentality. Perhaps where you are from logging hasn’t traditionally been managed well but where I am from it is vital to the economy and management is absolutely critical that it remains long term viable business. Even after over a hundred years of logging in my area I am still surrounded by endless forests that one could get lost in and never found. That is not by fluke it is by the fact that like any other crop, forests are too a crop.
Density and quality of construction lumber has noticeably dropped over the past century. I doubt that there are anywhere that logging is managed in a regenerative way, just “sustainable” to the degree in which we measure that.
