[daveFNbuck]

If your goal is to not have a mess, you can get there by cleaning up all your messes. You can't get there by not adding to the existing mess.

[ebikelaw]

There are messes that cannot be cleaned up. We have the leverage to destroy everything. Therefore it is better to focus on preventing the mess, than in futilely pretending we can clean it.

[daveFNbuck]

Obviously it doesn't make sense to clean up messes that can't be cleaned. There are also messes that can be cleaned, and it can make sense to do so.