All power to that engineer. From an HR standpoint, Google might be right, in the same way that VW would have been right to fire an employee who disrupted meetings when they built cars for the Nazi regime.
Trees themselves are useful because they support biodiversity such as small mammals, insects, all the useful things along a forest floor. can't do that with asphalt.
Removing parking lots will increase public support for all of the other things you mentioned. It's easier to start with tearing out parking lots and if necessary, cap parking prices, in addition to the other decades long projects