which do you think henry hudson would have been more amazed seeing, how it was back in 1609, or how it is now?...
pollution is inevitable, its been happeneing long before manhattan was discovered by the white man, just increases exponentially in the last century or so because of the technologies we've discovered. theres no way to exist how we do today without most of the pollution that also exists. think about it, no one would be able to fly to woodward, or much less pay that amount of money, and give you a job if it wasnt for how we lived today.
im not saying i necessarily totally disagree with what you're trying to say, but more or less say that we really cant do anything about it. overpopulation should be the main concern, as it has been suggested to occur within 100, or 200 years...well i feel it will be much less than that. many places are already well overpopulated. and the US has the largest land to population ratio(each person, has the most amount of land to themselves on average) than any other industrialized country in the world. we have barely even felt the effects of overpopulation yet it has been occuring for years already.
sure, we need to protect where we live, but part of this huge uproar of doing so is why the economic struggles have occured, sending production else where while they dont have environmental laws. i guess you gotta see both sides of the story, but hell, i just wanna ski