> Perhaps one of the least fashionable predictions I made nine years ago was that ‘the ecological footprint of human activity is probably shrinking’ and ‘we are getting more sustainable, not less, in the way we use the planet’. That is to say: our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to reduce what we take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist, Andrew McAfee, recently documented this in a book called More from Less, showing how some nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less water, less land. Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff overall.
...and what you're leaving out here is that this is far too little, far too late. This is like noting a decrease in the number of iceburg collisions in the last hours before the Titanic sank.
This is NOT a cause for optimism. We're destroying the environment at a slower rate, but that doesn't mean we're not destroying the environment.