As such, I got to see the horrible way we treated the planet and can remember the differences in both results and behavior.
It was not even remotely uncommon to just throw your trash out the car window. I don't mean a cigarette butt, but whole waste from a fast food meal, diapers, and any other refuse was simply thrown out of the window.
The national parks were even full of trash. You'd go into the park and the drive in was littered with the refuse from years of campers and visitors. It wasn't hidden, but right there in the open.
The bit about don't mess with Texas was actually a campaign to clean up Texas and stop the littering. The highways were littered more than one might expect at the enterences of today's landfills.
The rivers were polluted beyond what some seem to imagine today - and this was not that long ago. For a while, it was even considered sound science that the solution to pollution is dilution. Technically, that's probably sound theory but there is a finite amount of dilution to be had.
We've come a long ways and there are still things to complain about. However, we can now eat the fish from the rivers and probably not die. Probably...
Laws should change with the times and I don't know enough about the specifics to unilaterally condemn efforts to examine the status quo.
I try to be charitable, after all.