Because we let ourselves down. We knew about fossil ressource depletion in the 70s and about the effect on Co2 on temperature in the 19th century (the earliest

Because we let ourselves down. We knew about fossil ressource depletion in the 70s and about the effect on Co2 on temperature in the 19th century (the earliest article i've found is from 1912, but the science was available earlier). We could have invested in better infrastructure and better housing since at least the 90s, and pushed the research towards material science and fission/fusion after the 80s. Pushed to create more public researcher jobs would've been nice too (most innovation is built on top of public research, and forming researchers is nice for the industry too) Instead we built more stuff for cheaper (by outsourcing the production and crippling the productive apparel of small third-world countries).