[alberto467]

"in some sense" is doing a lot here.

It's not really a collective decision, it's the decision of governments, but also it was a temporary decision (basically every pandemic in history lasted a maximum of about 3 years), not a permanent one.

With a longer time-frame, there is time for people to elect new governments, and guess what would happen when a new politician comes along pitching: "hey i will stop all this green stuff which costs money and i'll give it to you curing poverty and making you richer, the other countries are still polluting who cares anyway". Meanwhile the other politicians pitch is: "No we have to make sacrifices to reduce our emissions, we can give up some comforts or pay more for them".

Guess who would win that election...