"That’s the only way, really, to save this planet."
What goes up, must come down. Or we put it on the moon. At which point, we've past "heavy industry", and already have fusion, and thus no need to "pollute".
Tail wagging the dog. A lot of our problems are perspective, and if we change that, we realise the angle to succeed.
See for example mobile phones and the internet, it was not making a larger suit case to carry a library, or putting more libraries everywhere, it was shrinking the library to a phone or using wireless communication.
Likewise, pollution is generally an economical problem, not a technological one. It's nearly always more economical (in the short run, cutting costs) to "dump" any "waste", even if you had magic technology or were in space... it would still be cheaper to not go to space, and thus the "solution" would not be adopted. :(
Biting the hand that feeds IT
