Except that this time Korin, it's different. Each of the points you mentioned, like the hole in the Ozon layer, acid rain and many other issues like tobacco, asbestos, DDT, they required a relatively small change compared to what is in front of us now, like regulating Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) in industrial products. It wasn't an economic question. Removing CFC/HCFC didn't require from us to buy less products or to completely dispose of fridges. Most of the time technology could fix those issues. Replace the harmful element with something else or simply filter it out, problem solved.
But the issue we're facing now goes much deeper. It's not about Co2 like how many people say. In fact Co2 is not even the real problem here. It's that we're releasing to much of it. Even if we would stop tomorrow with it, we still would be running with full force at a global catastrophe. Some people believe all we would have to do is to replace normal cars with electric cars and just use solar power or something else to run them and the issue would be fixed. This however isn't going to solve it. If you really take it serious it's about the way how we live. The way how we consume products, how we create them, how we generate power. How we are always making more and more of it. It's about the system the system we live in is the problem. It might have even something to do with social issues, the haves and have nots, how poverty and wealth is created and so on. The more money someone or nations have the higher is their industrial output, the larger the destruction and effect on the environment. The US military for example is creating more pollution than some smaller countries out there. And I believe this is one of the reasons why there hasn't been a real change even though we know about global warming since the early 1950s - you can look up educational films where they talked about many issues that we see today in the environment. The fossil fuel industry knew about it at least since the 1970s when their own researchers made studies about the effect the burning of fossil fuels had on the global environment. And the general public knows about it at the very least since the early 1990s.
What we really need to do to prevent this ecological collapse would be a change in our habits. We need to change the way how we consume products. But endless consumerism is the foundation of our whole global economic model, our way of life and how we define wealth, the GDB, economic grow rates we use all kinds of ways to measure wealth that way even if it leads to completely bizarre situations where natural catastrophes increase the GDP because after all the homes and cars have been destroyed ... guess what? People buy new ones. So the GDP grows. China creates whole ghost cities for millions of people without anyone living there to boost their GDP. Some call it capitalism but that's not really accurate I am afraid - not anymore even I had to change my mind on that one. I don't know what to call it to be honest. It's like a monster sitting in the background. And I have no clue if there is even an alternative really as the more I think about it, the more do I believe that our human nature is the problem here. Maybe we are doomed as a species. Maybe as individuals we can do changes and regulations to prevent some issues, like the Ozon layer. But a change of our habits? How do you manage that people get rid of their greed for example? You could probably also ask how do you get aggression out of humanity or competitiveness. Socialism tried somewhat to change humans and their nature but it failed spectacularly. And Millions had to suffer and died as the result. We seem to have it in us somewhere that we always want more.
It also is an issue that hits America a lot harder then others when you look at it from a cultural side. Because Americans are not used to this idea or concept of abdication and working with physical limitations. It's not part of the American culture. The US is about exploration and exploitation of nature, natural resource, always with the goal of more improvements and more wealth in mind driven by the idea of liberty and personal freedom. If there happens to be a problem like overcrowding and poverty, people started to move, they moved either to the west or further inland away from the coasts, they started cultivating new lands and if that wasn't possible anymore Americans started to become more efficient, boosting production, digging deeper for resources, making larger machines developing new technologies and so on. It is no coincidence that America created the largest economy humanity has ever seen. Industrialisation might have started in Britain, but the US really got it to perfection. And they exported this idea globally because everyone had to compete with each other in some sense.
But what happens now when you tell such a culture which never had to hit a hard limit that couldn't be overcome by technology or exploration that there is simply not enough anymore for everyone? Or that you actually have to divide the land and the resources now in a way where everyone can have a more or less decent life. Not too poor but not to rich either.
Maybe we simply can't change as a species.
