Your point about the ozone layer response is very relevant to our expectations of solving climate change. I think replacing CFCs was just low hanging fruit, which I didn’t understand as a kid. I just assumed if we kept recycling and not consuming so much it would put us on track. So naive.

For sure, I think the patriot act was a turning point in trust of government in the US. It filtered though to our government in Australia during the Howard years. Similar to the US, around the GFC we had a hopeful change of government, but that hope for progressive values (Obama for you guys, Rudd for us) turned out to be misguided. I tend to think of those “centre left” governments as representing managed societal decline as opposed to the accelerated decline of the right wing parties.

And every hair on your back, shoulders and ass is step towards being Chuck Norris.

I think part of the problem is disillusion. Millenials in the west grew up in a period where it looked like tech was going to benefit society, and climate change was going to be addressed, and ethical consumerism was somewhat meaningful, and social mobility would still exist. We are having to downgrade our expectations and it hurts.