to a significant extent the modern environmental movement is not only a rebellion against the actual environmental destruction wrought by things like the cuyahoga river getting so polluted it could catch on fire, damming glen canyon, and ddt pushing the bald eagle to the brink of extinction; it is also a rebellion against the unrestrained power to destroy that brought them about

when people move to off-grid solar cabins in the mountains, support laws that make it impossible to build nuclear power plants, or take up organic farming, they're not just trying to save the planet; they're seeking refuge from that unrestrained power of destruction, which they have come to see as malignant

they are seeking autonomy in which to construct a harmonious life

but the power to destroy, pouvoir de nuisance, overlaps greatly with the power to create; you cannot build a hydroelectric power plant without destroying the land upstream, you cannot build pruitt-igoe without bulldozing poor neighborhoods, and you cannot invent nontoxic firesafe refrigerants without taking the risk of destroying the ozone layer

so, when these 'environmentalists' seeking autonomy look at high-modernist 'cities of the future' visions of towers in a park whose polyhedral geometry is a boast of the architect's rationality, they correctly see them as the epitome of central planning with the unrestrained power to destroy

which, to return to the alternate history imagined at the beginning of the article, really doesn't have a great track record, even aside from environmental damage