This chapter is in three parts. The first outlines a history of inaction with respect to addressing the causes of catastrophic human-caused environment change. The immediate question that arises in this context concerns why, if so many scientists are so certain that humans are causing catastrophic changes to the environment that threaten human existence (or, at least, the way humans currently exist), nothing meaningful has been done to address catastrophic human-caused environment change. Two intertwined explanations for this are developed in the following parts, with additional reasons for inaction being presented in the following chapter. One thread, taken up in the second part of this chapter, relates to the vulnerability of science and scientists because of the overstatement of the capacity of science to discover truths about the world. The other thread, taken up in the third part of this chapter, relates to the fundamentally conservative nature of governments, especially those in advanced industrial nations in which neoliberalism have flourished. Political inaction is, in part, a reflection of the fact that those in positions of political power seek to preserve the social order to preserve their dominant position. But it also reflects the fact that the dominance of neoliberal ideology has meant that those in government seek to preserve a capitalist market order that can neither adequately value the environmental destruction that occurs during production, distribution and consumption nor take that value into account in market transactions.