I took it as a generic tangent because it went into a generic critique of environmentalists, and as a straw man because no one would plausibly argue "can never allow anything new".

The 'generic tangent' point doesn't exactly explain itself, but it's so important. This recent comment explains it more, with links to lots of previous explanation, if anyone is interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26894739