We are passed a habitable and comfortable zone for a diverse world. Its gone.
Governments allowed power companies, automakers, and petrochemical companies and now big tech corporations to trash an entire planet. We sped to our ruin starting in the late 19th century. When Edison turned on a power plant and tried to hide the smoke and tar from inspectors. In 150 years through greed and avarice. Gone.
When humans learned about the damage, we basically swept it under the rug.When corporate labs found out about it, they buried the lead, bribed, and attacked any alternative. The evidence is there and it's quite damning. Not only to companies like Exxon who knew, but to anyone claiming money and power are good. That things like moral ambition or affective altruism justify actions. New veneers for a rotten age.
I am, sadly, convinced it won't start to incite action - real change -until its really bad. The political and educational climate is not supportive.
Tragically, we almost got there. We had a template with the Ozone solution. Even a pretty shit company had an alternative product. CFCs were widely regarded as a bad move and people believed the scientists. You don't hear about the hole in the Ozone and of you're young enough, you probably have no idea it was a problem. Alf, the stupid fuzzy alien TV sitcom, even had an episode calling a CEO to ask him to get rid of CFCs. And we did it. Politics, advocacy, and even business for its own gains of course, did it. And we were almost there as early as the Carter era with climate change. Alas, solar on the white house roof is the perfect symbol for our potential change. You can look up what transpired.
Kyoto and Paris were great. Renewables were coming. The Petrol States (especially KSA and Qatar) killed it all because the people in charge of our governments were, frankly, cowards unwilling to fight back. Unwilling to hold other nations, companies, and voices who were lying.
Someone, somewhere, can start to heal this. But it'll take a worldwide political revoltution to stop the bleeding. Frankly, again, we can't convince people the earth is round right now so I'm not optimistic.