If the result is deforestation it’s not really carbon neutral, that would require another tree to grow in its place. Otherwise oil would be carbon neutral too, since that once came from plants.

The main difference is the sheer amount of energy we use honestly, if we covered all our current needs with wood we’d probably run out of trees faster than they could ever regrow. In that sense coal isn’t strictly worse, if we stayed on 17th century level energy consumptiom but used coal instead of wood, we wouldn’t have to worry about global warming either.