Everything's in decline these days. We lack the political will to solve some of these large scale problems. This confuses people, since we do actually have the technology to solve a lot of these problems. But it's a coordination problem. How do you motivate millions of people across 2-3 countries to care about one particular issue? It sounds simple on paper, but for most people "their cup is already full" of other people's pet causes.

They're maxed out, and there's a limit to how many causes they can 1) be convinced to care about and 2) how many causes they actually have the impulse control to keep strict about.