While I agree with the substance of your point, I take exception to this:

...is going to take more than pouring cold water into our own ears.

It's too common for people to assume that big, difficult problems must have big, difficult solutions. You can't possibly know that no simple solution exists unless you have a sufficiently detailed model of the problem to extract a non-simple solution. It's reasonable to dismiss any particular proposed simple solution if the proposal isn't backed by real evidence, but that shouldn't discourage us from looking for evidence that points to solutions of unknown difficulty.