Teller may believe that the system and our leaders are just a reflection of us as a society? After all, it's society as a whole that allowed the system and our leaders to be put into power in the first place.
You make it sound like we've been destroying environment only lately and with current political systems.
Humans have been wrecking havoc various environments ever since Neolithic. Although there's no definitive proof, there are strong suggestions that they were at least contributing to the disappearance of the Mega-fauna, for instance.
Examples of small human settlements in small islands are very characteristic, IMHO. Everywhere it happened, endemic birds where usually eradicated very quickly.
Well the systems and their leaders come from the species, not from ether - and remain there because the species seems unable, for the moment, to decide to change them.
The root problem of all is that we discount too much the future, so we don't value enough the long-term effects of anything (votes, policies, environment, etc.). This is something instinctive and natural to us as humans, and it takes us a lot of mental effort to be rational to the e.g. LessWrong et al. ideals, to the point that we can't be indefinitely rational, just for brief moments of attention. Our irrationalities govern us.
If you look into international politics and even the financial elite, the will to change and adapt green policies is there, more so than in the general public.
Which is exactly the problem. Nobody is going to follow a leader preventing them from buying 7 different iPhones even though you probably only needed one.
Which is a simplification, but the middle class is completely dependent on economic growth. Both as consumers, but mainly as workers.
I think there is a lot of hope for change though, I mean, automation is going to make 60% of the current workforce obsolete over the next 20 years. With that comes a need for change.
