Those... are all problems that would have happened if we didn't change our behavior. And luckily we did. Well, except the forests are still being destroyed.
What's happening in the Amazon is an obscene travesty, but overall global forest cover has been increasing for about a century. The 80s and 90s saw the ozone hole and acid rain problems addressed and ultimately put on the way to being righted.
Fire frequency and intensity in the US are a function of warming and really stupid forest management, with density, deadwood, water table policies, and other localized aspects being used wantonly as political tokens.
We need to do so much better. We also need to be much more competent at scale. It's possible. It's necessary. There are too many big real problems for the current state of disarray to last, one way or another.
>overall global forest cover has been increasing for about a century.
Can you cite a source for that claim? WRI's Global Forest Review data across the last 20 years shows annual primary losses between 2 and 6 million hectares with an upwards trend, and overall loss in the last 20 years sitting at 411 million hectares.
In terms of the longer view: "The turn of the 20th century is when global forest loss reached the halfway point: half of total forest loss occurred from 8,000BC to 1900; the other half occurred in the last century alone."
I remember being surprised to read about "global greening" - here are some links about it. I don't know if it's such an optimistic trend as presented though, and what it means in the context of large-scale deforestation that you mentioned.
Greening mitigates the impact of climate change to a point, but that we're seeing it so strongly take effect is alarming because it indicates how strong the underlying shifts are, and there comes a point that it ceases to mitigate the negative effects. As the equator becomes increasingly desertified polar regions shift from barren icescapes to being able to support more plant life. Also as photosynthesis increases due to greater CO2 in the atmosphere so too does plant respiration, where carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere overnight. One way to look at it - The entire plant biomass of the earth removes about as much carbon from the atmosphere each year as China alone emits in that same year. So the capacity here to mitigate climate change via global greening is quite limited.
Anything that acts as a damping mechanism on the impacts of climate change has to be taken as a good thing though - Our biggest addressable existential threat is the rate of change, and slowing that via any means is a good thing.
We never changed our behavior, we simply outsourced it to East Asia, where there are few meaningful environmental regulations, and an even greater cost to human rights.
IMHO we made the situation much worse. You just don’t see it because the average American or European hasn’t been to mainland China where the smog is so thick you can’t see down a city block and the rivers and waterways so polluted they change color. But unfortunately the ignorant will brag about how we have done something to help with environmentally conscious vehicles or activities while doing little to help solve the actual problems.
We still have more nukes than ever, plenty to destroy all major metropolitan centers, and exterminate 1-2 billion people. We still have corrupt and war hungry people in power (and a sense that they can meddle everywhere without repurcursions), and so on.
So, we didn't exactly change anything on that front.
We still have worse than ever pollution, increased industrial production, several times increased fossil fuel burning, etc. So much for doing something for acid rain then. What happened was just that industry moved to China and elsewhere, so we exported the problem from where 12% of the global population lives (US and Europe) to where 40% lives.
I mean, obviously nuclear war was averted because we ended the cold war (we changed our behavior). I suppose I could be misinformed but I believe the hole in the ozone layer was fixed by banning CFCs (we changed our behavior)? I know less about acid rain. We are continuing to destroy forests.
Acid rain was the result of air pollution containing nitrogen and sulfur oxides, primarily from industrial sources, but also from vehicles. Strict emissions controls have largely solved this problem in developed countries.
> I mean, obviously nuclear war was averted because we ended the cold war (we changed our behavior).
I had a very spirited argument the other day about whether a unipolar world is actually more stable than a multipolar world, or not. The threat of nuclear war is ever-present, even if it is less serious now than it was in the 60s. I’m not sure where you get “obviously” in this claim.
> I believe the hole in the ozone layer was fixed by banning CFCs
The alternative explanation (which I’m sure you will be able to find a “debunking” of somewhere) is that ozone is regenerated very quickly, and the “hole” (it really was never more than a “thin spot”) in the Antarctic has improved because the South Pole is exposed to just a little more solar energy now. CFCs probably do make some difference, but they are very heavy molecules and would not accumulate much in the upper atmosphere:
(Note: That article has some data that could support this theory, but it does not reach the same conclusion. You are nevertheless encouraged to think for yourself.)
It seems to me that the reason the USA may not be a superpower anymore in the near future can hardly be blamed on anything other than stagnated American politics.
Fire frequency and intensity in the US are a function of warming and really stupid forest management, with density, deadwood, water table policies, and other localized aspects being used wantonly as political tokens.
We need to do so much better. We also need to be much more competent at scale. It's possible. It's necessary. There are too many big real problems for the current state of disarray to last, one way or another.