Anecdotally, paper mills don't seem to have a problem successfully growing monocrop forests on their own properties because they actually have a reason to care about the success of replanting their own land.
https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2640043,-85.4463662,3277m/da...
The western half of the US has many monoculture forests where forestry companies manage them with thinning, herbicides and selective planting.
Natural forests in the west are diverse and contain many species of trees. They are different trees than you see in the east, and many of the coniferous species appear similar.
This summer a Dutch tree-planting company accidentally started a fire in Spain that burnt a much wider surface of forest than what they had planted. As a local major put it: "they were going to plant 200 hectares and ended up burning 1,000 hectares covered with 50-year old pine trees".
https://www.heraldo.es/noticias/aragon/huesca/2022/07/20/los... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/22/reforestation-... https://landlifecompany.com/news/land-life-statement-july-21...
I wouldn't be surprised if, from the point of view of carbon taxes, the saplings that were burnt in the fire were accounted as having offset carbon emissions just as much if they had lived a full life. Presumably, the new saplings that will be planted on their ashes will be accounted by the same amount.
The carbon offset market is deep with scams [1]. Most have no fix. The problem you mention does: issue offsets for trees buried, i.e. carbon sequestered, not planted.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/10/1024751/carbon-c...
We really just need more foresters, with a broader mission that extends beyond simply government-owned park land, who can help individual landowners to plant the right kinds of trees in the right ways.
The problem is that people like big trees and big houses, and they aren't compatible long term.
I don't mean to be rude, but how brown is your green thumb? I get killing house plants, but killing a tree growing outdoors seems like something you'd actively have to do. The most common "mistake" I've seen are lack of care with lawn equipment like weed whackers. Are they just not being planted correctly so they don't have a chance?
Also trees might not be a good match for the soil, there's clay the roots can't penetrate, etc.
However, I have pecan/oak trees in my area. Every spring, I get free saplings from the nuts that actually germinated and sprouted in a lot of my pots that I use for my container garden. If I were to actually try to get one of these nuts to grow, it would never take. Yet every spring, Mother Nature gives me freebies that I feel guilty about plucking when it comes time to prep for the next round of veggies instead. I have an almost perfect spot to let another tree grow to full size. If it weren't for the remaining stump from where the shitty developer planted Bradford Pears, I'd transplant some of the Live Oaks saplings in their place.
=) I really wish I could make a lot of my decisions based on this alone.
If you have a short attention span, that's not good.
Yet, at the same time, if you zone out for an hour and doing this daily, that's not good but in an opposite manner.
In Florida, builders understandably plant a lot of palm trees. But the palm trees they plant aren't native to Florida. Palm trees grow wild in Florida, but they don't plant these because maybe they're not pretty enough or they produce fruit which attracts wildlife, so instead we get palm trees from Australia or other places. It's really insane.
Or contract a remote landscaper and do the right things since the start