I got mighty annoyed with the intro eco article in the latest Wired. To quote:

Green-minded activists failed to move the broader public not because they were wrong about the problems, but because the solutions they offered were unappealing to most people. They called for tightening belts and curbing appetites, turning down the thermostat and living lower on the food chain. They rejected technology, business, and prosperity in favor of returning to a simpler way of life. No wonder the movement got so little traction. Asking people in the world's wealthiest, most advanced societies to turn their backs on the very forces that drove such abundance is naive at best.

And I saw this quote from The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (via):

The rise of worktime was unexpected. For nearly a hundred years, hours had been declining. When this decline abruptly ended in the late 1940s, it marked the beginning of a new era in worktime.

Since 1948, the level of productivity of the U.S. worker has more than doubled. In other words, we could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took in that year. We actually could have chosen the four-hour day. Or a working year of six months. Or, every worker in the United States could now be taking every other year off from work -- with pay.

How did this happen? Why has leisure been such a conspicuous casualty of prosperity?

And I can't help but think the green-minded activists were right all along, and not just because of global warming. The product-driven society we're building is inane. And Wired is right there in the middle of it, obsessed with its stupid gadgetry. I am so, so, so tired of gadgets.

But Wired isn't tired of gadgets, they just love consumerism, so they feel a need to criticize good people who are concerned with something other than the acquisition of status and wealth.

But that's not really my point. My point is that the environmentalists are still mostly right, and the technologists are still mostly wrong. The environmentalists aren't all right -- sometimes they can be reactionary luddites, or suggest solutions that are unreasonable because they are predicated on population contraction or other impossibilities. But when they speak of conservation, frugality, and conscientious consumption, they are right. They believe we have a duty to give more back to the world than we take; you aren't clever when you trick the system and take more than you give: you are repugnant.

What do the technologists offer? Tremendous potential, no doubt, and offers of real progress. But they are bound by this same economic force that the environmentalists wish they could escape. If you can't sell it, it isn't worth doing. Everything has to be monitized. Every transaction must be taxed, every benefit mitigated with a dollar cost, even if that cost is applied artificially... and if you can't monitize then it does not deserve attention.

And of course this drives us to consumption, even as it damages both the planet and our personal lives. And how to solve it? The technologists answer: more consumption, always more consumption...

The environmentalists were right then, and they are right now, and the consumerists are still wrong, and they've squandered too much of our technology and potential. There are many good things we've done in our modern society, and many things we've accomplished, but these have all been done for higher minded reasons than the acquisition of wealth.