Oh, these things are all very useful for their intended use cases, nobody ought to dispute that. Where these things become expensive and problematic is that once they're used (and discarded) they eventually become someone else's problem. Yes, we demand plastics and PFAS because they're useful We also just toss them and don't clean up because doing that is free vs. doing the right thing isn't If we're honest with ourselves, would we have accepted the total costs associated with their whole lifecycles if we were required to pay them up front? Maybe, maybe not. Honestly, I think it's a little problematic to say 'industry gave us what we wanted', because it also gave us things we didn't want when it lobbied so successfully to not be responsible for cleanup. There's also a fundamental unfairness involved when buyers and sellers of these products got value out of the transaction and were able to dump the costs associated on people that didn't get those benefits.

This is the scenario where the externalities of making these chemicals may well end up costing the public more than it was ever profitable to the people making them at a profit. Future generations, saddled with shorter, less-healthy lives and the costs of mitigating the mess left behind but none of the profits, will rightly judge us harshly. Granted, we took the steps to close the ozone hole and our rivers aren't regularly on fire any more and there's a lot less acid in the rain than there once was- and it feels as though when they couldn't pollute in those ways they made up for it with microplastics in the oceans and these damned PFAS