Robert Bryce, author of “Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper,” captures the headlong rush of Western culture’s endless drive for ever better technology. It is an extraordinary impulse that has created a world in which more people live longer and more comfortably than ever before. Mr. Bryce’s policy prescriptions will be more welcome in Houston than in the White House. He contends that the pantheon of environmentalists like Mr. Gore, Bill McKibben, Amory Lovins and Greenpeace are wildly optimistic in their extravagant hopes for wind power, solar cells and biofuels.