system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: why can’t we just plant a huge amount of trees instead of trying to stop CO2 emissions?

It seems to me that most of our governments and environmentalists are focusing on people’s and companies’ reduction of CO2 emissions when discussing how to deal with climate change. This requires a lot of social pressure and people’s sacrifice. So I always wondered if we couldn’t just plant a whole bunch of trees and other plants to solve the problem? I don’t think anyone would oppose that.
gpt
Trees can help to offset CO2 emissions, but they’re not ‘free’ to grow — they require the correct soil and a lot of clean water.

You can grow trees where they’re not entirely meant to be growing, sure, but then you have something like Southern California that burns down if someone looks at it incorrectly.

It’s also important to note that you can’t cut down an existing forest and then just plant a bunch of trees to quickfix the fuckup — forests are highly complex ecosystems from root to canopy and Chet from Toledo planting 3000 of the same species of spruce tree where there used to be a thriving forest isn’t going to fix anything.