system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Developers shouldn't be allowed to clear cut lots to build homes

Since the late 90's in metro Atlanta, GA new subdivisions/neighborhoods are built by clearing 99% of all trees and grading the land. They also have tried to squeeze more and more homes on the smallest lots. This wasn't how home builders built subdivisions previously.

Yes they would have to remove some trees for the homes footprint, driveway, pool ect. But they would leave many of the old growth trees. 

This has many benefits:

1. Privacy between homes and from the street, absorb noise and wind.
1. Provide shade on homes, reducing energy usage during summer. Also reducing heat island effect.
1. Increasing home value.
1. Prevent erosion and help from run off.
5. The land can still support wildlife such as deer, birds of prey, turkeys, rabbits, and foxes.
1. Trees also absorb carbon ~330 pounds of co2/per year, and other greenhouse gasses and toxic compounds.

Why developers remove trees:

1. It is cost effective and more efficient to build homes this way.
2. Many people find it annoying to rake/remove leaves in fall/winter.
3. People like large grass lawns.
 
Atlanta has been called "the city in the forest" for years but that is really changing. I'm a free market guy, and I don't want this to be about climate change. I personally feel that our forests and parks are a public good, we should have some regulation on developers about leaving/replanting native trees. It's their property and they should be able to do what they see fit with it, but it has externalities that need to be addressed in my opinion. 

This goes against every economic bone in my body, but I think this is something that the positives of this outweigh the negatives of regulation.

CMV: Land developers should have to leave and/or replace trees on lots when building homes/commercial buildings when possible.

EDIT: Yes, I know that trees have to be removed for engineering purposes (roads, utilities, infrastructure)
gpt
If you generally favor free market, but the issue is an externality, then there's a simpler solution: rather than requiring that trees stay on the lots (which is a fixed prohibition); figure out what the actual value of the externality is, and make that a fee for removing trees from the lots (Separate from the actual cost of doing so), with the proceeds from that fee going to other efforts that support public good/deal with the externality issue (i dunno what, town tree planting programs or something, or park maintenance).   Then the free market can decide when it's still worth it to remove the trees or not.