(serious) Is there any hope? Its just one problem after another (probably because everything is linked).
What are the chances that we will get our act together or be able to engineer ourselves out of all of these problems?
What are the chances that we will get our act together or be able to engineer ourselves out of all of these problems?
Bird conservation efforts in the last few decades mainly focused on wetlands. See DDT, national wildlife refuges, and the duck stamp.
So, it's not like the decline is inexorable. But it's not going to fix itself.
They interpret it to only prohibit intentionally killing protected birds. So, if you wanted to, say, drain a wetland that migratory birds depended on to build a parking lot, which would wipe out nesting grounds and lead to a lot of bird deaths--that would be fine under the Trump interpretation as long as you aren't building the parking lot to intentionally kill the birds.
This has already started having an effect. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, for instance, no longer stops loggers from cutting down trees with nests of protected birds in them, killing eggs or chicks.
I took regional agricultural production and soil quality, active regional environmentalism, presence of higher education (Cornell), water sources, historical wildfires, and more into account. I'm hopeful that I picked a place that will give my children a less frightening future than the rest of the country, at least for a while longer.
I'm working on buying some land now to start working on some basic agricultural production and building a home designed around "edge case" risks being less edge than normal such as extreme weather, temperature, vermin, and unreliable utilities.
Engineering is what got us into this problem. Foolish to hope it can get us out.
What means that you made a clear point, that I don't think anybody misunderstood, with a clear optimistic message. Still I think it's more pessimist than the reality.
Things like biodiversity loss may not.