It's a modern problem. Below the current city are the remains of several other cities that previously sank into the muck. The problem only became difficult to manage when we stopped rebuilding over sunken structures and started continually investing in extremely complex and heavy structures that we are hesitant to write off.
I’m sure if we compare governments and corporations with impact of individuals it’s not 50/50. Govs and corporations have much bigger chance at changing large scale factors, quite obviously. Even individual behaviour is in the hands of the governments – see France banning short flights as example.
the same could be said on the power of people above all with inflation, drought, heat waves, pollution waves, mindsets change slowly but surely, it'll become shameful to have noisy and polluting vehicles. I can see some environmental revolution in the future, environmental migrants, environment will be problem number 1, far ahead of minor things like covid. Government often follow and react. I'm french and this law is a bit of an experiment, very minor https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/24/world/europe/france-short... I live near Nice, a plane landing every minute, at least 6 planes trail visible in the sky, when there's not too much pollution, the government is still subsidising airplane companies, airports etc. It's not enough, we need quotas of a few air flights in our lives, no more