When being green saves green, that’s when businesses, politicians, and everyone will make the switch.

I couldn't have said it better. As Paul Hawken argues in The Ecology of Commerce, the whole point of economics is that waste should be unprofitable, and efficiency profitable. So why do businesses waste, pollute (i.e. damage other property), etc.? It really does come down to government intervention in the marketplace that prevents business from assuming the full costs of their business practices.

Maybe because government subsidizes inefficient energy sources (through wars, regulation, etc.). Because government encourages the socialization of environmental costs instead of making polluters pay victims market restitution directly. Because government subsidizes the corporate legal structure by limiting the liability of shareholders for the actions of their agents (the corporate managers). Because government recognizes corporations as "human beings" who themselves have constitutional guarantees of speech, protection from unreasonable searches (inspections), etc. when corporations are clearly not humans but artificial entities. Government supplied roads even subsidize centralized production and transport, artificially inflating the need for high energy density fuels at the expense of market alternatives.

Now, don't get me wrong - there's more to it than just this. There's a corporate culture that is wildly out of sync with reality. But government subsidizes this disconnect, making what should be unprofitable, profitable. This leads to systemic and long-term problems instead of short-term market corrections and business failures.