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You can take this a step further and just cut down trees, bury them in the ground and let new trees grow.

Do your part, and don't recycle paper, instead make sure to bury it. (I'm only sort of kidding.)

That's an important point - where those trees go when they die is part of the puzzle. Systems thinking is important. When a tree decays, I wonder how much carbon goes into the soil vs. into the air. What about when a forest fire goes through? More frequent controlled burns help prevent catastrophic forest fires, but do they cause a smaller or larger overall co2 release? On the one hand, a firestorm causes entire trees to explode that would otherwise survive with little damage. On the other hand, frequent burns might burn material that would otherwise decay into soil...

The form of carbon is also important - if methane is produced during decomposition it is much worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2

Any paper in a landfill is going to decompose back into CO2. You'd be better off recycling it and reducing demand for lumber.

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