That sort of naive techno-utopian response isn't helpful at all in the face of reality. We lack the ability to stop the degradation of our current environment. That doesn't bring high hopes that we could undertake the exponentially more difficult task of building a new and better one in another planet, not before we run out of time.
The Great Lakes are cleaner now than they were in recent history (I guess if you consider zebra muscles, lampreys and the ongoing dangers of Asian carp that is less true). From the standpoint of industrial contamination things are certainly improving.
Licensing programs have succeeded in increasing fish harvests (that is, given cooperation the number of fish in the ocean can be increased alongside increased extraction).
There are all sorts of situations where the problem is that we aren't doing something we know would work.
Limited regions, mostly in advanced countries, where both environmental controls and offshoring of highly polluting activities has taken place, are cleaner.
Many aren't.
Within the US you have hog farms in the Carolinas, CAFOs in Kansas, the Mississippi river basin, Gulf of Mexico, and the great rivers of the developing world: the Nile, Amazon, Ganges, Yellow, Yangtze, and Indus, are in much worse shape.
Licensing programs have succeeded in increasing fish harvests
They're not doing a whole lot for fish stocks however. And that's the rather bigger problem.
The very likely explanation is stocks are increasing in response to the better management.
I agree that it will be difficult to get people in the U.S. to push China to take a more expensive approach to industry. I think calling it 'offshoring' is awfully simplistic (U.S. is agricultural exporter and for energy only imports oil).
