"Test Set on Transmission That Could Save Fuel" (NYTimes, registration nonsense) is an example of the kind of environmental action you like to see. Coming up with solutions that are better for the environment while still being economically sound. Why can't this sort of thing happen more often? I think it relates to George Weigel's "Creation groans." Across the world, people are increasingly confused about Satan. Several news articles in the last 6 months have documented a rise in satanism, and it is common knowledge that increasing numbers of other people no longer believe in Satan as a real, discrete, intelligent, living being. Both are problematic in their own way. This leads us to claim God responsible for things that He did not will, but which are instead the results of rebellion against Him. Along the same lines, from Romanticism on, and now especially in environmentalism, there is this unsound notion that creation, minus man and his influence, is perfect. Utter rubbish, but many people believe it. Thus much of environmentalism is far too extreme to be really practicable, and some of it too extreme to be even desirable. You can see this in Rachael Carson's Silent Spring, where she mixes sound advice with utter rubbish, and has no problems advocating things that put people at greater risk. For instance, she advocates allowing shrubbery to grow up along the sides of roads when all the research done indicates that fatalities in accidents drop when the roadsides are clear of ditches, trees, shrubs, so on, essentially the 2 or 3 car lengths of short cut grassy filed, possibly with near zero resistance wild flower, that the Department of Transportation has advocated for Highways for years.
