My current situation is a microcosm of what you're talking about.

I bought some degraded farmland used for cattle grazing. Mostly denuded of trees, the creek is polluted by fertilizer, roundup, and cow shit. The net result is no carbon absorbing trees and lots of methane = climate change.

But there's no obvious path back. Without the trees, the grass grows like crazy. The only economical way to keep the grass down is have cows. I have planted 200 trees along the creek (sounds like a lot but it's a pitiful fraction of the land) but that involves a lot of work (keeping the grass from strangling the trees, fencing it off from the cows) and expense without any prospect of financial return. Most people are just not gonna bother.

Cropping is what i want to do but that's problematic because of winter frosts and dwindling spring and summer rainfall - which just leaves the dumbed-down cattle farming. Previously i had pegged the oil industry as the worst culprits but i'm now starting to see that farming practices are right up there as well.