In my state, timber tycoons have systematically stripped the forests of usable wood. Having exhausted local resources, they are now migrating to neighbouring states to repeat the extraction cycle.
About five years ago, the state governor enacted a strict logging ban, citing the industry's absolute failure to replace the trees they harvested. For nearly two years, these corporate interests lobbied the government relentlessly to lift the restriction. Throughout this extensive lobbying period, they consistently failed to present any viable reforestation strategy.
Consequently, the governor drafted a state-led initiative. He established a new agency dedicated to reforestation, superseding the existing national forestry department that had long since abandoned its mandate. For six months, this new office functioned as intended. They planted saplings, monitored ecological recovery, and actively regulated logging activities.
Then, regulatory capture took effect. The tycoons successfully bribed the new agency, and all conservation efforts ceased completely. The governor's personal complicity remains unconfirmed; however, the institutional failure is absolute.
Capitalism functions as a purely extractive virus upon the planet. If this economic architecture is allowed to persist, within a few decades the populace will be forced to purchase polluted water and privatised oxygen simply to survive.
Yes actually, the USSR and China are famous for their ecological track records. Not perfect by any means, but they were/are far better than their capitalist counterparts.
Better than the US is not a high bar to clear.
The PRC has gotten better in the last 15 years, but was also pretty poor before that, and still enacts environmentally catastrophic colonial extractavist projects in South East Asia, similar to Europe and North America in Africa and South America. (Though none as catastrophic as my homeland has been in West Africa.)
I hope that the PRC can keep to it's trajectory, while reducing the harm done in South East Asia, and then in a few years can be better environmentally than all 1st World Nations.
The US is far better than both China and the USSR when it comes to environmental protections. It's not even close.