The short answer is: tackle NIMBYism. Look for things that benefit society as a whole, but may not benefit your local community. Work on trying to change that.
Simple examples: wind installations are often rejected on a local scale, but if everyone rejects them, then we have a large scale issue. Urban transit corridor development gets rejected locally, but has larger scale benefits. Look at bylaws for urban wildlife, gardening, solar panels, street-based electric vehicle charging...
Not all progress needs to be green, but the environment should be considered.
In my community, there is NIMBYism related to the development of mining industries required to support green tech. Like objections to silicon mining and processing for solar panels (unwarranted concerns about impact on water), lithium ore refineries (you want to process where green energy is cheap, and locally we are 100% hydroelectric, so it is a good place for this -- but people don't want to see blue collar development in the city), etc.