The professor might be correct about the way smoking and slavery made it into our consciousness ad acceptability, but this process appears to have taken decades. I doubt we have so much time for the importance of sustainability and global warming to acquire importance in our psyche.
Perhaps a shorter route might be to make business cases for being sustainable or for controlling global warming. An example of the approach I am suggesting is this post that says CCS (carbon capture and storage) projects could be a $56 billion business – http://powerplantccs.com/blog/2010/03/carbon-capture-boom-100-co2-capture-projects-56-billion-in-a-decade.html . Now, that’s something businesses understand – revenues, profits, finance…
So, while we wait for the cultural shift to get human beings to see the right perspective, should we try some ideas that will immediately spur us to act, with our current cultural orientation?
Just some thoughts…