The collectivist mindset is more around top down direction. They'll happily throw trash on the street, but if someone threatens to fine them for doing it, they'll stop and not complain.
I think this continuous stream of weather caused disasters, record breaking heat waves, droughts, extremes, etc are slowly getting us ready to make some tough choices. The past year has shown that we can do that in a hurry when we have a pandemic. It's a matter of public opinion and once that shifts, things just happen really quickly and get a dynamic of their own. That change creates opportunities for companies to capitalize on. The changes are massive; therefore the opportunities are massive too. The NYT is right that that will involve a lot of money. They seem miss the notion that there's also a massive return on that investment. In a way capitalism and greed are working better here than politics and activism.
The first not so tough choice will be the timing of the complete death of the ICE vehicle industry. Weather it's 2030, 2035, or 2040 doesn't actually matter at this point because it is basically happening already. The consensus seems to be that the phase out of ICE vehicles is now inevitable and most manufacturers are already investing to survive beyond that. That creates a dynamic that basically makes it happen faster. Which seems to have taken a few manufacturers by surprise. Tesla paved the way for this in the last fifteen years. Now others are also having success in the market with EV only products. Sure most of these will happily churn out ICE vehicles as long as they can get away with it but increasingly they are looking towards EVs for growth, good press, profit, etc. Companies merely holding on to what they have without investing will simply be wiped out. To some extent that is already happening as well.
The same transition is happening in the energy sector. Wind and solar are basically killing more co2 intensive forms of energy generation like coal and increasingly also gas. There too people are haggling over when the final plants are being shut down. But economics are driving that transition faster than years of activism could. Wind is cheaper, therefore coal plants are disappearing by the double digit GW per year now.
These natural disasters that are widely attributed to climate change are just going to make it happen faster. But it was already happening anyway.
In a society as cut-throat capitalist as the US, yes. In "welfare states" such as Europe, where everyone has their basic needs in life (housing, healthcare and food) at least somewhat met, this desire is far less pronounced.
Still though, even in Ireland, where there is a strong social push-back against the greedy ego mentality, there are still people willing to sell out their environment, country, and grandmothers to get a leg up.
These people have done very well for themselves in the last couple decades, and especially well the past few years.
To further show how right you are, these people have invested considerable resources (that have paid off well) in messing up the basic needs you mention of housing, healthcare and food - and I would add media to that list.
To me, this is the core of neoliberalism, and it is a worldwide plague.
What I'm talking about is a widespread attitude among 'normal' people, where anyone with a whiff of too much ego about them is nearly ostracized. So much so, that it's almost a crab-bucket mentality, rather than plain down-to-earthness.
As an example, the normal American style of telling people what you're good at goes down like a lead balloon in Ireland - saying anything positive about yourself without sandwiching it in layers of self-deprecation is seen as unforgivably gauche.
And yet - despite the above - Ireland has no shortage of neolib politicians and moguls, who have rotted our infrastructure from within - such as with tax havens, a very shortsighted and shitty strategy. The have become incredibly wealthy in the process, doubling their wealth or so during the pandemic - and they get away with it because they own the media. It's as if they're invisible, and thus immune to any social pressure.
https://www.npr.org/2017/02/21/516375434/does-studying-econo...
People want to make as big a pile of money as possible, as quickly as they can, with the idea that the pile will be big enough to allow them (and just them) to be secure for the rest of their (and just their) lives.
That attitude runs directly counter to the long-term planning, and sacrifice for the greater good, that is necessary to combat things like this.
Some Asian nations, with their focus on Society, may be better equipped to deal with this, than nations that heavily promote individual achievement.