Planting trees is dangerous common ground

Planting trees is good, right? Apparently, both Democrats and Republicans think so, but could efforts to plant trees pose a danger to existing trees?

If incentives are offered to plant trees, land owners may cut existing trees in order to qualify for more tree-planting money. Somehow, existing trees and forests have to be protected and preserved while other areas without trees are re-treed/reforested.

What's more, in order for trees to grow in areas where they don't already, mowing has to stop and pavement has to be removed. What is going to cause property owners and governments to add more tree canopy and root volume to their land by reducing the footprint of pavement and buildings?

People could go around collecting acorns and other seeds from local trees and spread those to untreed plots of land in the area, but they could also let squirrels do the work of planting, if they would just stop mowing

What are the chances that all this tree-planting fervor will actually result in a net increase in sustained forest/canopy volume and not result in more clearing and planting of timber, etc.?

Carbon sequestration requires continuous/expanding forest/canopy/wood-mass, so it is not enough to cut and replant timber every few decades.

I have read an article claiming that wood construction sequesters carbon, but if there aren't living trees on the ground as well as tall buildings made of wood, then the ground under the building will not store up layer upon layer of carbon sediments over the centuries the way a living forest does.

So while it may be good to use some wood for construction, we have to think about the bigger picture of displacing natural forests for timber plantations and land that isn't sequestering sedimentary layers because it is being mowed and/or paved or otherwise cleared of underground roots and sediments.