While I sympathize with the sentiment, that creating some kind of censorship dystopia will magically solve the problem, the idea has no traction when most of the people doing so make less than $1 a day somewhere in a remote corner of the world. This is the problem I have with climate activism.
The best way to reduce pollution is to raise the standard of living for people around the world. People who are wealthy can afford cleaner forms of energy, they can afford to dispose of trash cleanly, they can afford to recycle. People that are poor have nothing to lose and don't care about "environmental authorities". "Let's ban X", "Let's force people to do Y" and "Throw them in jail" is not a reasonable or effective way to solve problems. It also further divides people and does more to hurt your cause than to promote it.
We are not talking about energy, we are talking about waste disposal.
And not having money is not a excuse for burning trash. In part, because burning some types of trash (pretty much anything other than yard trimmings, including food) will make you and your community incredibly sick, causing you to spend more money in the end.
It's already illegal to burn trash in almost every jurisdiction on earth. I am just calling for the removal of content featuring activities that are already illegal.
Then, is censorship a solution here? fuck yes. Let's fucking do it. I am all for the censorship of that content. The less of it, the better. Will that inconvenience some people? Fucking fantastic. No ad revenue for the morons working against society, making residential super-polluting videos. They should be in jail, not on YouTube.
It's normally much easier to buy e.g. a computer, a mattress, various household chemicals than to get rid of them properly. We need to tackle one or both sides of this equation, or people will just dump stuff in their local river if you censor the burning video.
It's the old piracy argument again, loads of money was spent trying to take down pirate mp3 sites without results, then Spotify comes along. But maybe recycling some of this stuff is really difficult, in which case the cost of dealing with it should be factored into the price.
A bad analogy for this case, because pirating mp3s doesn't give you, your family and your neighborhood cancer and doesn't generate fat soluble toxic chemicals that accumulate in wildlife, livestock and humans for decades.
The best way to reduce pollution is to raise the standard of living for people around the world. People who are wealthy can afford cleaner forms of energy, they can afford to dispose of trash cleanly, they can afford to recycle. People that are poor have nothing to lose and don't care about "environmental authorities". "Let's ban X", "Let's force people to do Y" and "Throw them in jail" is not a reasonable or effective way to solve problems. It also further divides people and does more to hurt your cause than to promote it.