The third premise is that the tradeoff that pits human well-being against environmental damage can be renegotiated by technology… If people can afford electricity only at the cost of some smog, they’ll live with the smog, but when they can afford both electricity and clean air, they’ll spring for the clean air. This can happen all the faster as technology makes cars and factories and power plants cleaner and thus makes clean air more affordable.

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, p. 124