An ideal solution to forget some issue is to start dealing with some other bigger issue. This does really work out and is what commonly used by most of the politicians to solve conflicts with people.
Before economy crisis, everything was going well and we really needed some issue to fight on. Because people all used to face some conflict or the other and if there is none, then the environment is really weird. So people focused on issues like poverty of other nations and global warming.
And all of a sudden, when they were hit by global crisis, they have become busy dealing with falling market shares, unemployment, recession, etc. And thus they have no time to deal with other conflicts.
Though there is not much impact on people not focusing on environmental pollution, environmentalists are unable to decide whether recession to the environment is a boon or bane.