Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong

In Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper, Robert Bryce advocates that technology will continue to help us out of any problems that we have. The underlying thesis is that the liberal environmentalists attacks on modern society are the problem. We must use "more energy" to help rise up the poor. He complains about the left's romanticization of the past. However, he then turns around and romanticizing the more recent past, advocating more coal and other fossil fuel use.
I am writing this at the time of a large scale shut down of society due to the Covid-19 Coronavirus. This has exposed the fragility of our current economic system. Things can be made more efficient, but often at the cost of eliminating redundancy. A little crisis exposes the limits of this system.
The key part missed in arguments on all sides is the benefit obtained by the energy consumed. A long car commute consumes energy and makes somebody less happy. However, it does allow them to live in a larger house. There, they spend more energy maintaining the yard to adhere to HOA guidelines. They also spend more energy driving to far away places to complete errands. Without cheap energy, they would not be able to live that way. But, would they actually be more miserable if they did? The author seems to totally miss this key area of density. We can live in a much more dense fashion than we currently do. We have the technology. However, we don't utilize it.
The book does have some good information on advances in technology. However, it suffers from the biases in types of energy. He serves as a cheerleader for coal because it makes electricity. However, he ignores any problems that it causes to the environment or people. On the other hand, wind is castigated because it kills some birds and hurts some rural residents uncomfortable. His arguments would have been much stronger if he just stuck with his basic energy density argument. Wind does require a lot of space to produce energy. That would be a legitimate argument of scaling. Similarly, American ethanol could easily be shot down on basic physics. The political dribble just makes the argument worse. He complains to be somewhat agnostics to the global warming and environment arguments. Alas, he picks his facts to bias himself towards certain side. It is a shame, because he does expose a number of key scientific inconsistencies with many of the environmental arguments.