> Why do many environmental activists seem to want to go back to a shitty past rather than move forward to bright future.

So do care about the environment but many "green" activists do not care at all for the environment: for those it's just another version of communism. They want to crush the notion of the individual: they cannot understand the notion of a free, happy, individual.

They're rather have unhappy people united in communism, living miserably like under the USSR, than having a more advanced, richer, country if more advanced and richer means people are free.

Many don't care a yota about the environment: it's just an excuse to try to remove freedom from others.