A primary driver of the near-extinction of the American buffalo was the insatiable demand for industrial leather belting to power machinery in factories. This often-overlooked connection shows how industrialization directly fueled one of the largest ecological disasters in American history.

People focus their environmental efforts on highly visible but low-impact items like plastic bags and recycling. The climate and environmental impact of the food products they purchase—particularly meat—is orders of magnitude greater. This reveals a massive misallocation of public concern and effort.

The American conservation movement was ironically pioneered by sport hunters to preserve wildlife for their own recreational use. Organizations like the Boone & Crockett Club, co-founded by Roosevelt, were created to outlaw the practices of the very market hunters (like Boone and Crockett) they were named after.

The Froyo industry's previous decline wasn't due to a lack of demand, but a surplus of supply. The business model—low-cost self-serve machines and minimal labor needs—was so attractive and easy to replicate that it led to oversaturation. The industry essentially became a victim of its own success.

The spike in 1970s oil prices was a direct reaction to the U.S. abandoning the gold standard. Oil-producing countries were no longer being paid in gold-backed dollars, so they raised prices from $3 to $40 per barrel to compensate for the currency's rapid loss of purchasing power.

A record harvest of corn and soybeans, coupled with lower demand from China, created a surplus of turkey feed. This supply chain effect directly lowered input costs for farmers, resulting in a significant 14% Thanksgiving turkey price drop for end consumers.

Over the past 50 years, Americans have reduced per capita beef consumption by a third by substituting it with chicken. This seemingly simple dietary shift has inadvertently cut more emissions than any other climate action before the rise of solar power, highlighting the massive climate leverage in reducing beef production and its associated land use.

Despite shelves stocked with heirloom tomatoes and exotic grains, our core food supply is dangerously uniform. For example, 90% of U.S. milk comes from a single cow breed descended from just two bulls, and half of all calories consumed globally come from just three grasses.

In the late colonial period, white-tailed deer skins were the second-largest commodity by economic value exported from the colonies, surpassed only by rice. This highlights how integral the wildlife trade was to the early American economy, supplying European markets with buckskin for clothing.