when the people who make the rules say "Sorry, the rules are the rules, there's nothing we can do" remember that they literally gave a tree human rights just because they felt like it.
You're not totally wrong, but an important distinction is that some rules aren't there just to be arbitrary. They're linked into a larger system, and you can't change one without affecting thirty other things. It usually needs more than ten seconds of thought prior to posting on the Internet.
trees having human rights would shake up this whole system, what with us having entire economic sectors based on slaughtering them wholesale. so either you can just do things as a one-off without generalizing them or you can just shake up the whole system. obviously, this case was the former, which means that other cases can be too. way to end it by being a dick, though.
Sorry, I see how that last sentence can be read as being directed at you. I was thinking more of people in general who say "we should just change the rule"l because it doesn't work in this one instances" without thinking of impacts beyond the immediate problem. Making the environment part of our economic and social systems is a good idea.