There are ecological, biological, sociological, and psychological problems that can never be solved to make this idea work. The physical problems of propulsion have capture your fancy, and perhaps they can be solved, but they are the easy ones.
Statistically it was not greatly different than it had been for previous generations, but anecdotally it had become so prominent that every problem was noticed and remarked. The cognitive error called ease of representation thrust them into a space where every problem they witnessed convinced them they were in an unprecedented colapse. They were getting depressed.
