And these people are buying tens of thousands of feet of lumber solely to burn it away in the middle of nowhere where there’s little vegetation to absorb the excess CO2 waste.

That’s not really how plants work.

Photosynthesis turns co2 + water into sugar + oxygen. Cellular respiration turns sugar + oxygen into co2 + water.

The total co2 absorbed by a plant is exactly equal to the amount of co2 used to make all the sugar, cellulose, etc. the plant currently has. Digestion, decomposition, fires etc. undo that.

A mature forest or lawn is carbon neutral: new growth is balanced out by decomposition of old growth.

Distance to plants doesn’t matter. What matters is if and how the trees they’re burning are being replanted or replaced. .