Forests are what's actually worth prtotecting. This is not different from a field of corn. There is no ecological value to a farm of pine trees. If you ever walked in one, you would know that.
Trees are trees, but trees aren’t forests. And a trees don’t have nearly the ecological impact of forests. In fact, in the U.S. and around the world we have the problem of way too many trees, which is causing apocalyptic ecological damage, because they’re the wrong kind.
Cutting down all those trees in a tree farm isn’t hurting the environment very much for the same reason that randomly planting a bunch of trees for a tree farm doesn’t help the environment, which is why conservation is so important.
With that logic we could cut down pretty much every single forest in Sweden and tell people to stop crying about it.
Edit: Why the down votes? We pretty much have no natural forests left in Sweden. It's basically all mono cultures planted with the intent to be cut down and sold. But if that's the only forests you have they're still very valuable (as forests I mean).
I for my part downvoted because it's just false equivalence. Cutting down a part of a commercial forest is pretty far from completely cutting "every single forest" in Sweden.
Is it great that trees were cut down without replanting? No.
Is there a perfectly cleared and infrastructurally connected plot of land in Brandenburg that Tesla could have used instead? Also no.
Your comparison was basically the same as "We sell a plot of land to Elon? Why not just sell every plot of land to him then!".
Is it cheaper to cut down a forest than to buy a agriculture field?
That area was planted to be cut down. It was a monoculture for wood harvesting and the surrounding area still is, AFAIK. The only change to the original plan has been to not plant young trees again after cutting everything down and instead build a factory.
The number of trees is Europe is growing quickly. In fact, terribly so, this is an official part of the carbon mitigation strategy of many western democracies.
You can be angry about a lot of things but unless this is some ancient yewtree wood, this is honestly a nothing-burger.
When talking trade-offs you can't just compare a combustion engine to an electric engine, you gotta consider electric public transport too. This has the bonus of pissing on Musk.