I don’t know necessarily that a tree is actually sentient but if we seriously consider it, perhaps that might lead to better environmental conservation practices as a matter of ethics.

They most likely are not sentient, as we currently understand or can perceive, though the complexity of the networks formed within a forest might, might, allow for something like it in aggregate. Consciousness is deeply strange, for something that should be so familiar.

But as Angel says, here it’s just a paralytic deflection. Like saying that eating plants is stealing from the animals that could eat them, therefore we’re already sinners, therefore we might as well sin some more.