"Help" like planting a few trees ostensibly to "solve" climate change. And show me the evidence this is better than regulating and eliminating pollution at its sources.
I am not saying it's better then anything but I am glad the article is here. We have a pond on our lake that is feed from run off from a farm field and have algee blooming issuse covering the whole lake. We are currently digging out the pond and trying to improve the inflowing creek to help 'plant filter' the inflowing water. It might not fix global polution but it can help fix my specific pond issues. And grow crops/flowers for free. We offten think of it as polution (for good reason) but you can also think of it as free fertalizer.
You might apply for Federal grants for wetland creation. They give out hundreds of small grants. Some deadlines are mid-March.
You figure out a way to block agricultural runoff at it's source without bankrupting the ag industry or quadrupling food prices let us know. Your next trick will be to figure out a way to pass meaningful legislation in the current climate of extreme political polarization, but one miracle at a time.
We can be more optimistic than that. The clean water act aspired to make all waterways fishable and swimmable by 1983, with carveouts for non-point-source pollution like lawns and fields. Meat producing plants take advantage of that carveout in a particular way. But to achieve the swimmable and fishable goal, the EPA needs to be able to affect any upstream point source. The groups lobbying against this are well financed but they are fighting against existing law.
And winning. Fun Fact: the eastern third of North Carolina is blanketed in a thin film of aerosolized pig shit.
Do you really need scientific evidence to justify planting trees and flowers? They're nice even if they did nothing.
We can have both. Is a false dichotomy. Trees will sequester several types of pollutants from the soil, for sure.