as a crude first pass, here are some solutions:
Oh, good. Solutions.
Maybe you should run for president. I see you already got 4 votes.
Let's look at your platform:
Diversity Loss
Establish large areas of National (or International) Parks and reserves.
I agree.
And countries have been doing this for years. But deforestation is getting way ahead of efforts to save it. So your platform is for the governments (who are all short in money) to buy half the planet and save it as natural lands?
Pay local people NOT to engage in destructive agricultural and other economic practices.
Ah, we just pay all farmers who don't have a need for a certain destructive practice. That might be a good talking point in Iowa, but most people don't want the government to fork out that kind of money.
Employ local people at good wages as game wardens, so they have better options to make money than poaching.
I don't think you grasp the extant of the problem. 20% of all species are in danger of extinction in the next few decades. (
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full ) Tell me again how many game wardens you plan to employ worldwide to stop this. Who is going to pay for it? What about the countries that don't cooperate with your plan? Is your charisma going to win them over? How are game wardens going to save insects and plants that are going extinct?
Nitrogen Contamination of Rivers
Capture and process runoff before it enters rivers (this can be as simple as digging and maintaining a system of ditches).
Uh, where do the ditches go?
So we are just going to build dikes around all the farmland--"Build that wall!"-- to prevent fertilizer runoff? I don't think so.
And then, I suppose, you will propose other expensive programs to save the species that are endangered by the dikes, yes?
Use less fertiliser, or use different fertilisers that are less prone to running off the land.
Good ideas. I suspect people are working on this. But I wouldn't bet the farm it is going to solve the problem any time soon.
The nitrate that ends up in rivers was put on the land to do a specific job, and what ends up in rivers is a dead loss for farmers, so recovery of this valuable material that they paid good money for seems like an excellent idea; Cleaning up the rivers is a mere side effect of saving money in this scenario.
If it is economically viable, why aren't people doing it? Or do I see another massive government program paying for this?
Global Warming
Nuclear Fission.
Now you're talking! Vote for Bilby!
Governments could certainly promote more nuclear, mainly by just getting out of the way and letting utility companies build the facilities. Winning popular support will be difficult.
How do we fuel it all? We have uranium reserves to provide all our power requirements for six years. That's not much. Yes, I know, you say we will find more if we just look, but one would think, if reserves are that low, there would be major efforts to find reserves and get them listed on the company books. This stuff is probably going to be worth a lot of money in the coming decades. Perhaps we have found most of the economically viable reserves.
If the stuff we are finding is like getting the copper out of this mine, maybe it will never get extracted-- (
https://peakprosperity.com/lessons/crash-course-chapter-23-the-environment-depleting-resources/)
Note that each of these proposed frameworks for solving each of these three problems makes no mention whatsoever of the completely irrelevant question of how many people there are.
Again, per the I=PAT formula I keep referencing, we have 3 levers to control our impact on the planet: population, affluence, and technology/lifestyle. You keep going for the last one. I am all for technology and lifestyle changes that will work to preserve the planet. But the simple truth is that these levers are falling way behind. It looks to me like blind faith to say this will turn around significantly without need to address the other two levers.
Don't underestimate the problem.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full