To be fair, it was also conservatives who didn't want people to embrace the car and so many other environmentally unfriendly new ideas. It may be that if more people were conservatives early on, we wouldn't be in this environmental mess. Turns out, we rushed forward with too much enthusiasm and not enough forethought.

Environmental conservatism was originally a right-wing idea. And to this day, there are plenty of environmentalists that consider themselves right-wing (myself included). You are judging a group by their pathetic leadership. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to replace the people maintaining control of the system.