There's also the idea that the warming is happening faster than it has in the past which is not going to allow the plant life to shift zones fast enough, which could create a mass die off.

I think we have real environmental problems like soil erosion, plastic pollution, overfishing and deforestation/desertification that we could be focusing on far more productively.

that I'm in favour of

those things are actionable

Yes

The AGW fear is an implacable an existential threat that lends itself to keeping the population in paralyzed anxiety rather than galvanized to action.

we can reclaim forest for the Congo and Amazon, we can prevent the spread of the Sahara, we can clean water

but those things actually need work and not just money and government projects

We don't need to go to Congo, we can reforest and repair watersheds in the American west first.

Would make our water supplies and ecologies far more resilient

the US isn't really that bad off in the grand scheme of things

Not yet @Lord Zedd

the Congo and the Amazon are major contributors to the climate over all

My state has huge tracts of land badly degraded by overgrazing of cattle that could use serious restoration.

I believe in acting locally.

I should say that some efforts have been done on the Sahara and the Congo

India as well has been some conservation as well

their efforts are definitely something to watch

Greening the Sahara would be great, don't get me wrong--I just want Africans to take the lead on it.

which they kind of are

the efforts in planting trees to turn back the Sahara are showing positive trends which is good and could mean it'll work in other areas

like here in Aus

there used to be a forest that ran right down the middle of Australia that helped water travel very far inland that got destroyed by the Aboriginals, I'd personally love to see that rebuilt

efforts for reforestation and conversation have been tried in the Amazon as well, Steve Irwin had an interesting way of doing it by basically buying up large chunks of land to protect it

That's excellent. I know there have been some good results from experimental cattle driving practices in Africa too where they mimic the behavior of predators to force the cattle to clump up and move around more frequently--it gives the landscape more time to recover between being trampled and grazed and it helps restore arid grasslands.

which works great until a government comes along and says fuck you we're taking that land anyway and selling it

I would do something like that here if I were a billionaire or king of America

Buy up millions of acres and designate them as Terrain Protected Zones

It works great for fisheries, no reason it wouldn't work for land too

America I believe has as many trees now as when the Europeans first arrived

Our extensive National Forest system is a good start

I don't think so

There are accounts of explorers being able to walk across the whole continental US without leaving the forest in the 1700s

We've got some pretty big prairies in the middle these days

We might be close though

And prairie is good anyway

Doesn't all have to be trees

I think overall we're trending towards a more sustainable economy without the massive government overreach but we're going to end up with government policy slowing it down and taking credit for it anyway

Probably

Kind of like with racial discrimination I think the culture pulls ahead, then the government steps in and passes a law that is no longer necessary and takes all the credit.

me sounding like a hardcore Libertarian today 😄