I’m a generally pro-Tree person but I do caution against this gung-ho sentiment because it tends to lead people down the path of 1) seeing a forest as just the trees and 2) seeing it as a single species of tree, because that’s how you get monocultures, and the lack of biological diversity in monocultures threatens the entire fake forest you worked so hard to plant.

So, plant trees, yeah, but smartly, in areas protected from animals initially that will eat the saplings and grow more than one kind and introducing other vegetation over time. All of the extra complexity will slow the work down and get people questioning you about why it’s taking so long to get a forest, but at least you’ll get something resembling a forest that will be able to sustain itself without human intervention long after we’re dead.