Tell me, gentlemen, how would your puny free markets handle stuff like this?
The way you phrased the question, it can’t - and that is the point. The catagory of “free market handeling something” is a metaphor and can not be applied to scientific thought. To think of capitalism in more scientific terms; it is best to think of it as a word limiter like: atheism, naturalism, materialism, egoism, determinism, etc. It is sort of a univeraly applicable “non thing” that tries to untangle nonsense from sense.
All other “theories” are not universal languages and/or sciences when speaking of market phenomena - they are practiced art (much like law) manegment theories that can not be rationally discussed or thought of; this would not only include things like Keynesianism and Socialism, but “free market solutions” as well. Also behind all these managment theories - and the only reason why any of them could “solve” (to use a generous term) any “problem” is due to an effective free market mechanism that is already in place - without which they would be impotent against the externality.
That stated: it is very important to consider expectsations when bringing up such a problem. People are working and making calculations within a real environment, you wouldn’t abolish the apparatus at hand in this type of situation - that is just insane. But the fact still remains, the more affluent the culture the better the odds of dealing with major problems like this (this is probably even inherent in the definition itself)- the only way to achieve affluence is via the market mechanism.