The number of trees is not the issue. The ecosystem is. Huge plantations of SPF in rows that are all the same age and size does not make a natural ecosystem, and biodiversity is very low.
>lakes & rivers are potable
Public drinking water isn't even potable in many places, nevermind lakes and rivers. This is pure fantasy talk.
>IOW, local environmental problems have been solved
No, they have been relocated overseas so they are out of sight and out of mind.
>The challenge is global problems; climate change is a fairly classic tragedy of the commons.
Yes, I am sure the animals going extinct really just wish we could come together and tax people for breathing. Of course they don't care about their ecosystem being destroyed to grow corn for 5 years before exhausting the land and burning down another 1000 acres of forest for another 5 years of corn.
>Our track record in culling is much worse. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot only managed to kill about 1% of the population
None of them were trying to lower the population. Funny how you want to equate "lowering global population" with "mass murder" even though you clearly are aware that limiting births is the actual strategy, which actually works.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/1409030-ani...
All the hit is coming in developing nations.
The populations Hitler targeted lost about 50%; if he won the war they'd have done much worse.
Pol Pot killed 25% of Cambodians, not 1%.
Stalin also had a greater impact on his targets. When he created the Holodomor in Ukraine, he killed 10 million, which is much more than 1% of that population.
Compare the US of today with that of 50 - 100 years ago. The tree cover is almost back to pre-contact levels, lakes & rivers are potable, smog doesn't kill 10's of thousands of people per year, et cetera.
IOW, local environmental problems have been solved. And we know how to solve them elsewhere in the world: economic growth. Once people have their basic needs secure, they start caring about this stuff. Internalize the externalities and let the market sort it out.
The challenge is global problems; climate change is a fairly classic tragedy of the commons. The solution here is similar: internalize the externalities and let the market sort it out. A global carbon tax, for example.
We used to be able to do this stuff. We banned CFC's world-wide, for example.
Our track record in culling is much worse. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot only managed to kill about 1% of the population, and the instability they created actually increased birth rates. Mao had an impact with the one child policy, but...