I saw a few of those articles or summaries. There are some disputes over exactly how much tree planting can ‘offset’ (or reverse) climate change, but the magnitude even in those disputes looks to be similar to cutting back on meat based and industrial agriculture diets . The main problem is political—clearing forests for meat, soy and palm oil, corn and cotton, is a big business.
there are even some people who say ‘habitat preservation’ (eg rainforests) is a bad idea because then you have alot of suffering animals living in them, who would be happier not being born.
i am in contact with a few groups in Africa who apparently quite busy planting trees (since I haven’t been there i can’t verify this, except from what they send me). My view is ‘precautionary’ or ‘prevention’ principles—avoid as much as possible deforestation and consumption of products that rely on it.
I’m skating on thin ice, but I think
1) the discussion is basically correct
2) similar problems have been discussed in evolutionary game theory, chemical reaction/economic/ ecological networks, cooking, and category theory.
3) I find it difficult to wade through examples (ie stories about AMF and gates foundations, or EA hiring) --these remind me of many ‘self help’ psychology books which explain how to resolve conflicts by going through numerous vignettes involving couples, families, etc—i can’t remember all the ‘actors’ names and roles.
4) i think a classic theorem in game theory (probably by john von neumman, but maybe by john nash) shows you can convert shapley value to counterfactual value very easily. the same issue applies in physics—which can be often thought of as a ‘continuous game’.
5) time ordering invariance is not really a problem (except technically)---you can include a time variable as is done in evolutionary game theory. (mathematically its a much more difficult problem but not conceptually).