Like a giant ocean liner, it is not something that can be turned around overnight, no matter how hard you try. Greenpeace has similarly been fighting this battle. If you knew what long hours and low pay those people put up with, you would see how utterly ridiculous that is. The problem is an overdeveloped survival urge. People will act in ways that increase their short-term survival, even if the marginal benefit is almost negligible, even if it hurts their own long term survival.
Humans have a very local focus both in space and time.
At any point in time, they are totally fixated on some tiny aspect of reality. They don't care about global problems or the big picture. The ultimate fate of the planet is in the collective hands of humanity, so each individual human feels no responsibility to do his part. Any intelligent species that can't find a way to eradicate that attitude burned into the genes, left over from pre-technological life where it was relatively harmless, is doomed to extinction. However, the changes needed are deep.