The Environmentalists versus the Technophiles

This essay from last Saturdays’ Wall Street Journal pretty much sums up my view of environmentalism. The only difference is that whereas the author, Matt Ridley, talks about environmentalists versus economists, I prefer to think in terms of environmentalists versus technophiles. The idea is that the environmentalists are always seeing threats to our environment from technology, and these threats require restrictions on our lifestyles, but in fact advancing technology manages to save the day. I talked about this briefly in one of my earliest posts (here; scroll down to the second-to-last paragraph) on the difference between Rich People’s Leftism and Poor People’s Leftism. Rich People’s Leftism, convinced that people are causing huge problems for the environment with our industrialized society, insist that we scale back the technology, while Poor People’s Leftism, appreciating what advancing technology has done for the poor in terms of mechanizing work, insists that technology will help us out.

Incidentally, I found this passage incredible:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent forecast that temperatures would rise by 3.7 to 4.8 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels by 2100 was based on several assumptions: little technological change, an end to the 50-year fall in population growth rates, a tripling (only) of per capita income and not much improvement in the energy efficiency of the economy. Basically, that would mean a world much like today's but with lots more people burning lots more coal and oil, leading to an increase in emissions.

Those are the assumptions they made? Didn’t they think anything would change?