Riiiight. They have good paying jobs (or could have, if they chose to work), autos, airconditioned housing, dvd players, etc. But they don't want Africans, Asians, etc to "be like them," i.e. prosperous, comfortable, healthy and well fed. That would be, like, an environmental disaster if billions of brown people were "consuming" like they (the elitist Western lefties) do.
In short, hundreds of millions must live in degradation and/or under oppression (and frequently die in large quantities) for the sake of "environmentalism". And while the left condems the underpriveledged to their mud huts, they ignore the abundant evidence that poverty is the greatest threat to the environment.
Better that millions upon millions die, and hundreds of millions suffer, than the lefties have to admit that capitalism works.
They certainly don't want that "tidbit" of factual knowledge to get around, not much chance of that however. The way these subjects are dealt with in the schools today they don't even know our environment is MUCH cleaner than it was 25 years ago.
That air quality has improved greatly in the last 10 years and it will dramatically improve even more, as more and more older cars come off the road.
That "global warming" is a theory, and as to what do do about it, there is NO consensus, Kyoto is a JOKE and will never solve anything.