Sometimes when I sound a note of hope about climate change, others seem irritated or even angry. As if hope negates strong measures, and unless we take strong measures, the situation is truly hopeless. As if hope engenders complacency. But hope can spur action, especially hope tempered by a sense of urgency and an understanding that sacrifice is also part of the equation. Since much of my hope has to do with economic development, advances in technology, and cultural trends, resistance to my specific message of hope may also reflect the anti-technology, anti-business, and anti-modernity bias that’s pretty common within the environmentalist movement. Within their dystopian imaginations, some environmentalists maintain a utopian vision of small farmers living modestly and in harmony with nature: a pre-capitalist world of plain living and simple virtues. Not exactly compatible with a vision of big cities and big farms.