the problem is less that we don't value the forest, but that we are absolutely horrible at valuing the future. our brains are designed to optimize for the present and near future. the value of the forest is spread out over thousands of years (just like the value of fossil fuels), and we just can't intuit that kind of value.

forests are like annuities (small payments forever), rather than lump-sums, but our brains respond vastly more to lump-sums. this bias is also why terrorist attacks lead to action, while vehicular deaths, which kill way more people, don't.

we have ways to objectively (if imperfectly) value things like forests, but we just don't intuitively believe in that number. for example, the concept of a carbon tax makes objective sense, but this kind of bias is its achilles heel.

(this subject came up in a number of my business school classes, which i found quite useful for learning how to think about such things)