If "you have to trick people into doing the right thing"; you might have to take the news with a grain of salt: other may be doing the same to you. Perhaps the doom isn't so imminent?
Perhaps, or perhaps we don't know what the fall of civilization looks like? I remember watching a talk by Jonathan Blow where he poses that question. Did the Egyptians who built the pyramids realize when their civilization fell or did it just look like business as usual until it suddenly didn't?
"other may be doing the same to you"
and they might not even be tricking you into doing the "right thing", just the thing that they want.