As a point of confusion, what is the obsession with planting trees? With little human intervention, outside of climate change, the earth is experiencing mass afforestation. There's been something like a 20% increase in plant matter in the past 50 years, an area double the size of the continental united states, due to warmer, wetter climate and a longer growing season. Is it the forest fires that have people concerned? That's largely due to this explosive growth and poor forest management. It's been a few years since I looked at the numbers but if I remember correctly, creating a 10-100x increase in wood product consumption (different wood products sequester different amounts of carbon) while preventing all forest fires globally would offset all human carbon emissions.