Envirasceticism

I think Brendan O’Neil’s essay on the new enviro-asceticism is brilliant. I especially liked:

Eating, drinking, playing, procreating – everything is carbon-calculated, everything is carbonised. These carbon-calculations really represent a moral judgement on our lives. They [today’s environmentalists] make everything into a potential sin, a crime against the planet. They send the very powerful message that to live, to travel, to breed, to immerse yourself in every human experience is bad – whereas to stay still, to stay put, to be meek, to be quiet, to grow your own is good. Experimentation and experience are potentially polluting; restraint is pure.

What do you think? Was learning to cook with fire where humans went wrong?