[alaxsxaq]

America solved a large part of air and water pollution issues as a side-effect of policies which shifted production largely off-shore. That solution won't work for the remainder.

The trash problem seems to have worsened - especially in the cities. Municipal governments have eliminated street cleaning from their service portfolio and now seem to mostly rely on things getting so bad that some civil group sign on to their adopt-a-highway program and make some effort to clean things up once or twice a year. Hard to take care of the home when you're busy sending trillions to destroying people's lives in other parts of the world.

The difficulty I have in looking optimistically toward the future comes from my lack of confidence in the leadership of this nation. An entrenched two-party system and a complicit media has led us to a place where we cannot adequately provide for basic human needs (education, health, and housing). Without caring for those things for all of the people living within our borders, the hard choices we will need to make are going to bring us through a period of turmoil as the pains of adjustment are felt unevenly throughout our society. Someone is going to lose and it probably won't be the rich and upper middle class. We will likely end up covering them for the loss of their beach-side property while the poor sod living in the countryside will be treated like we currently treat our homeless.