I hate to disagree with you, or others for that matter
@arsenic, but I have been doing science in the lab since 1973. I retired as an analytical consultant several years ago after spending half my life selling big ticket chemistry equipment, and training and supporting users in chemical fields covering most industries for nigh on 35 years, so yes I do know a little about science. Environmentalists do make stuff, they do live in the real material world, and they do use most of the tools that are available to us all.
What most object to is allowing others to destroy or despoil the environment solely for their own benefit or profit when there are real alternatives. The problem is that those who advocate doing the harm are always eager to stress how hard any alternatives are to get or use. What is often the case is that they are insiders of industries that will either cease to exist or have to change their ways, and there will be costs that they will have to accept.
Clearly you have a picture in your mind of environmentalists as some kind of puritanical spoilsports solely trying to spoil others legitimate fun. While it is inevitable that some will act out of gut feelings of indignation against equally un-nuanced advocates of drill everything and dig it up, that is not the reality for all. I do not consider every industry to be 'the enemy' by any means. I also know that it's not easy having to recognise that what you have been pouring your effort and investments into is destructive, but sometimes that has to be faced.
But when any activity can be fairly clearly and objectively shown to be doing a lot more harm than good, especially when that harm is irretrievably bad for the planet and all of its passengers, then somebody has to speak up against that activity. While that is not usually going to come from the ranks of those involved in doing the harm or profiting from it, I have had many colleagues in lots of fields who have seen the damage their industries have been doing and have tried to deal with the facts of the matter as objectively as possible. Some have quit or 'lost' their jobs as a result.
Many decisions that have to be made over time have been between options where both of which had environmental drawbacks. The point is that whenever possible, society should choose the one with lesser evils, even if that causes disruption in some quarters and some industries. Choosing between burning petroleum and mining lithium being a case in point. But I would not be at all surprised to see that lithium batteries will go the way of whale oil lamps just as soon as better battery materials are found. Altech's sodium batteries being a likely candidate that is already emerging, and once shown to be fully viable across a whole range of uses they will proliferate across the whole planet. At that point all of us "envirow@nkers" as you fondly call us will be a lot happier.
(20min delay)