>> Anyone still think it's a good idea to utilize all that "valuable real estate" being "taken up" by trees?
As long as plantation owners and/or illegal loggers do, then all your argumentation is moot.
Correct, thanks. Incidentally before seeing your post I just edited that part for clarity. Since I already made the edit, I'll leave it as-is.
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.
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.