Not so. Yes, the Chinese and Indians are filling their atmosphere with poisons, and they know that is something that needs to change, but they're torn between the progress of their individual citizens and the accumulation of nasty byproducts. They're between the classic rock and a hard place, third world countries passing through second-rate management on their way to first class. It'll get worse before it gets better, but mostly on their own territories. Gathering more and more people into great cities is a bad idea.
In the USA, as each problem has been identified it has been corrected, mostly. We changed the ways we use mercury, lead, coal, aerosols, gasoline, and hundreds of other elements and materials and processes when we found they had bad effects. Clean-ups are always costly and not always done the best way because of people. Everyone has opinions about everything and as often as not people with dumb opinions get elected and run things their way. California is a really good example in dozens of ways, but we can start with wildfires. Back in the Great Depression, the government began an employment program that organized and cleaned-up the forests to prevent and/or minimize forest fires. It took more than 20-odd years to cut fire roads criss-crossing the vast federal and state forests, and cleaning-up downed-wood, installing watch towers, creating a cadre of state and federal Foresters to oversee tracts to continue the process of keeping the forests orderly. There are always going to be dumb people who are careless with camp fires, and lightening will always exist, but the vast forests need to be divided into reasonably small sections with access pathways cut through so when you need to get a fire crew to a fire there IS a way to do it, timely. The Foresters grade timber and manage the many tracts by selling strategic blocks of timber that's ready for market and using that revenue to clear and clean-up problem areas on a continuing basis. There used to be great fires in lots of places when I was a kid, but not for the last 50-60 years. The mechanisms are in place now for continuous management by professionals. Except in California in the 70's when Jerry Brown became "Governor Moonbeam". The Flower Children didn't like logging because it displaced critters. "Hey! We got a good idea. Let's stop the people who make a living chopping down our beautiful forest's, -home to all God's creatures, and let them become... natural, again". Yessiree, natural... burns brightly. It took 20-odd years to clean it up coast-to-coast, and 40 years for it to go to Hell in a handbasket in California, but they did it. Now Californicadia has returned to it's natural geographical self of alternating between mudslide rains and drought wildfires, which will never change, but the size of the wildfires is a product of not managing the forests. When they decide to do it, it will take years and years and cost lots of money.
There are more trees in North America now than when the Pilgrims arrived. Settlers take trees with them wherever they go, and the Indians didn't have the ability to fight forest fires, they burned until they were put out by rain or a natural roadblock.
It takes money to do good things, Capitalism generates surplus money that can be taxed, but socialism does not. Unbridled, anything is problematic. The same things well-managed accrue to the good of many. India and China will reap what they're sowing and make changes, eventually. Europe will run out of OPM eventually, too. The world is not perfect, but it's better than when I was a kid, and we
are working on it.
