>There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to everything else we'll need to do to fix this problem.
Yes, there is.
Trees take a up valuable real estate.
As long as people can do something even remotely profitable with land they own, this can not work.
Trees are valuable too. The problem is we don't understand and/or appreciate that value.
For instance, trees essentially power the entire terrestrial water cycle. Without trees all the water rains out within a few hundred km of the coast. Trees (far moreso than simple evaporation) are responsible for pushing that water back into the air-stream. Isotopic analysis confirms that 80% of the rainfall on land is caused by transpiration, and most of that is trees. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983
This explains why deforestation causes desertification. Cut down the trees and you get a continent-wide desert.
These dynamics aren't well-captured by the present economic system, which only sees "valuable real estate" being "taken up" by trees.
Just up the ante for illegal logging and equate it to terrorism. Life sentence for anyone involved. I am sure it will make anyone think twice before doing illegal logging with such punishment.
Yes, there is. Trees take a up valuable real estate. As long as people can do something even remotely profitable with land they own, this can not work.