Can you imagine if the social-media-interlinked self-reinforcing "save the world by buying different stuff" crowd could communicate with each other during the period of removing lead from gasoline? Deafening constant voices going, "just don't drive so much sweaty don't be selfish" "i myself prefer a clean lifestyle. I take the train everywhere" "if you really cared about the world you'd just buy expensive EthicGreenPetrol, only available in select stations in prosperous cities. Its the only way to get them to listen 😇 if EVERYONE does it then the companies will just have to change because they're following our dollars!"

And ten years later, scientists and activists are largely unable to move the public, because everyone believes that the people who care about that stuff have the option of buying expensive EthicGreenPetrol, so surely that's enough work on the topic - after all, there's an alternative that people can freely buy if they want to. It becomes harder for people to get research funding or action change because inertia develops: a solution is readily purchasable but most people don't buy it, so therefore nobody cares, humans are awful and one lives on a planet full of enemies. After all, it's hard to go without nice things to afford the expensive gasoline that seems to be no different, especially when the people buying leaded gasoline are 1) instantly cancelling out your own efforts and 2) seem perfectly happy.It's quite easy to dismiss the "just don't buy the poison gas" crowd because they're smug, patronising Facebook bullies. Distraction and exhaustion do the rest of the work.

A generation later it transpires that the "buy yourself free of sin" message was funded, disseminated and encouraged by the fuel industry. Lead is still in gasoline. When their heirs challenge them on this mass failure of obligations, the people who allowed it to happen say weakly, "Well, I always bought EthicGreenPetrol."

Anyway corporations can't be trusted to manage shared communal resources like atmospheres, even if you gently twiddle them along by the strategic deposition of dollars into different pockets. It is also perfectly possible to remove their ability to do so.