You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.
The Spartan ephors again replied with a single word:
There are countless species of tree, shrub, grass, and moss in a typical forest. Also, fungi, bacteria, birds, reptiles, mammals, insects, arachnids. In the rivers, lakes and streams within a forest ecosystem there's countless fish, crustaceans, algae, plankton.
If we "replace" the trees, perhaps through fire, then we lose the biodiversity that comes with them. The biodiversity is a naturally balanced system with finely interweaved chemical processes that mutually support the whole. We lose the trees, we lose everything that comes with them and end up with desert.
A desert world covered in plastic "trees" is not the future I want for my children, and I am sure many would agree.
10.1016@j.joule.2019.07.010.pdf nominates it (and The Sahara) to host Radiative Cooling (e.g. blown film er, tents or such) to buy us time to fix the full 20+ gigatons of carbon a year. It would lower risks to the photocatalytic and other green process chemical and pharma. efforts nearby. Indeed it's probably more attractive to make antimalarial drugs than to photoproduce ozone for use on catalysts to treat sewage (on N-doped MoO2 substrate, say.) Straps are necessary for the boot...good speed.