Stand replacement events are natural too, driven principally by fire, wind, and landslides. The mistake many make, I think, is to presume there is some static “natural” state —- some mythic Eden —- in which, absent man’s influence, everything persists in perfect harmony. To the contrary, these are dynamic systems attuned to periodic violent change over time. Industrial forest harvest may not perfectly replicate nature, but that’s not the end of the inquiry. The question, I think, is whether the trade-offs are worth it given society’s profound need for homes, and given the relative impact of alternatives. Particularly given modern forest practices, I am highly skeptical lab-grown wood would scale with lesser impacts than utilizing the forests we already have, many of which are on their third or fourth harvest rotation. But all of that is beside the point I made above. In the US, forests of all age classes are trending up, not down. Much of this is driven by our radical curtailment of federal land harvest in the nineties (which came at the profound cost of sacrificing many rural communities).