I think you'd be hard pressed to find a time in history when life was better than it is today. And if you did find one, it would be so long ago than population levels were a fragment of what they are now.
We can't go back. Get that idea out of your head. The question is how can we steer the ship.
That's nice and dandy but what good is it if we can only sustain that maybe another 50 years if we're lucky?
Of course, the industrial revolution was a force of economic pressure, not a decision the world came together and decided on in unity.
So to prevent the industrial revolution would have required a suppression of freedom and property rights unlike has ever existed in history. On a world scale.
You mean how we can fix the leaks.
Thinking that organising a worldwide migration to another planet is going to be a practical option is as absurd as thinking that moving back to a pre-industrial society is.
"May you live in interesting times."
Seriously, get a grip and stop being self-absorbed. Read history before you long for something you've never actually truly experienced!
Even though you're grossly exaggerating what I've said in the comment, I'm still going to answer with a rhetorical question:
What good is all that shit if the price for that is the suffering and death of our children and eventual end of our species ?
This is what the article is really about. ...
My perspective comes from the summers spent with my grandparents - in the village where life was as it has been for thousands of years. They produced no garbage, they breathed clean air and drank clean water. Did they suffer ? Yes of course, from time to time, that's how it's always been.
Frankly, with all our advanced technology, knowledge, medicine, I think we are a lot more unhappier as a whole - you said it yourself, "my blood boils" - and for what ?
Anyway, I think you're angry at the wrong person, because I think we can have both magic and sustainability - if we just change our philosophy. We can look at the last 100 years or so as a 'growth spurt' for humanity - we had to break eggs to make an omelet; now it's time to get back into shape.
Use the best of magic and our ability to create new one and integrate it into a sustainable system, which treats nature as an organism and not as 'resources' and we might be able to survive it.