The thing is — the suburban-sprawl lifestyle cannot, and will not continue. If we don't put a halt to it in order to provide a soft landing, climate change will put a more-or-less abrupt end to it (not everywhere at once, and not always through the same means). The regression of optimistic urbanists to begrudged suburbanites just means more resistance to doing anything to solve our collective action problem around climate change, and a better chance of getting the worst-case scenarios.