Okay, the article claims there was a lost opportunity to do something about the problem in the eighties, but reading the actual text, the presented historical f

Okay, the article claims there was a lost opportunity to do something about the problem in the eighties, but reading the actual text, the presented historical facts (which are very interesting and very well presented!), I'm not seeing it. What I'm seeing is that the world was not ready to face the problem back then. And it seems to me the reason why not is economic. At the end of the day, people care more about the roof over their heads than they do about global problems. In the eighties, we didn't have much by way of good substitutes for fossil fuel. So the message people heard was that they would have to accept economic hardship for the sake of the environment. That was not what people wanted to hear. The lesson to learn from this is that we need to address the economic issues alongside the environmental ones. The message needs to not be that you must accept unemployment and poverty. The message needs to be that the task of transitioning the world to renewable energy is doable but enormous - and has the potential to create millions upon millions of jobs, as well as breaking the resource curse that decoupled the interests of the rulers from those of the people. That successfully turning our hands to the new energy industries will bring more prosperity than holding onto the old ones.