> * Being able to clean up environmental messes is more important than preventing them in the future, and they are not mutually exclusive.
I want to discuss this point. I think some people are reading this as "clean up >>>>> prevention", which I don't think is your point. Rather, your point is more along the lines of the Agile Manifesto (we value X over Y, doesn't mean we don't value Y).
Clean up is more important now because we've created a mess and can't simply discard it. In quality control (for companies) it is more important to improve quality (reduce messes, by analogy) because that reduces the amount of time spent in later rework (cleanup, in this analogy). However, companies have the option of discarding (deletion if it's digital, recycling or trashing if it's physical) their inventory. Deletion and recycling waste nothing but the time initially spent on it. Trashing, however, is an option for a company because they're not in a closed system. It may be expensive, but it is an option. They can close a poorly functioning facility, or a contaminated plot of land, and go down the street.
From an environmental standpoint, the planet is effectively a closed system. We can't ignore the messes that exist and just move down the street like a business might. We all need healthy oceans, healthy rivers, healthy lands. And we will run out of those things if we don't clean up the messes that presently exist.
Obviously, we still need to prevent more of them from happening. But clean up ought to be a higher priority (as a percentage of global effort) with reduction in waste and environmental impact happening simultaneously.