The cool, beautiful canopy of my hometown street was destroyed by Dutch elm disease. In the woods behind my house, my grandfather planted a row of hemlock trees before I was born. Now his legacy is being destroyed by another invasive from Asia, the woolly adelgid. With the elm and hemlock gone, we have mostly sugar maples, white pine, and ash tree remaining. The maples ares sickened from air pollution and just last year I noticed our pines turning brown from needlecast. And now I hear the ash borer is coming.
Between the stress of pollution/climate change and allowing these invasive pests on our soil, the US government has totally failed us. Trees are majestic, vital to the ecosystem, and the lungs of our planet. Why are our policies so backwards that we can spend $5 Trillion on war based on lies of WMD? Yet we lack the millions necessary to improve border controls and research curing diseases that slipped through already.
Unfortunately border control is not very effective,
but hopefully it will be possible to use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive to eliminate pests same way as mosquitos
Between the stress of pollution/climate change and allowing these invasive pests on our soil, the US government has totally failed us. Trees are majestic, vital to the ecosystem, and the lungs of our planet. Why are our policies so backwards that we can spend $5 Trillion on war based on lies of WMD? Yet we lack the millions necessary to improve border controls and research curing diseases that slipped through already.