Quite right. Technology is improving all the time. The oil era has lasted barely 100 years and will be over in another 50 to 75 -- a blip in geologic time. It takes some hubris to believe it's enough to permanently wreck the planet. And while the climate is indubitably changing, it has always been thus, and the extent to which latter-day technology is affecting current patterns is very much up for debate. Advancing the human condition means (A) putting these factors in perspective and (B) not retreating to 18th-century norms.