In many places there is suspicion of intelligence, but not of stupidity. Intelligence is blamed for all sorts of problems that aren't its doing. If it had been up to intelligence, the world would have been running clean energy a long time ago. Instead there are also stupidity, short-sightedness and deception; and these are the reasons for environmental problems that we are seeing.
A lot of environmental destruction is exceptionally low-tech. Sahara and the American Southwest were deforested a long time ago through slash-and-burn agriculture. As for the current environmental problems, they are a result of deception and ignorance. Science has known for many years what happens when the air is flooded with carbon dioxide and methane while trees are cut down at the same time. It has tried to tell the truth, but it has been opposed aggressively by conmen. And now we are finding ourselves in a crisis that never needed to happen - all because of deception, short-sightedness, stupidity and evil.
The same people who like to pillage the earth howl bloody murder at scientific advancements. Apparently it is playing God to create, whereas destruction is merely human. And the correct answer to these people is that, if it is all right to destroy, then it most certainly is right to create. In fact creation is far more ethical than destruction of things that one has not created and cannot re-create - things that one believes to be the creation of God.
It's not science, and it's not intellect, that are at the root of the present crisis. It is forces that oppose science and intellect while making use daily of things that science and intellect have made possible. It is the forces that want to deny reality even as they claim to speak for reality. It is the forces who think that it's ethical to burn the Amazon or flood the atmosphere with CO2, but not ethical to practice genetic therapy. It is the forces of greed, stupidity, short-sightedness and evil.
To these forces, the correct answer is just as above. If it's all right to destroy, then it also is all right to create. In fact it is far more ethical to create than it is to destroy and plunder. Scientific advancements such as genetic therapy and brain surgery benefit without destroying. Whereas insisting that the world run on dirty coal and oil, when there are many better technologies that can fulfil people's needs at present levels without hurting nature, destroys without benefiting.
"We don't need no education" has proven to be a disaster. Under-educated people make wrong choices coming from ignorance, and they fall for lies of all kinds of conmen. Education is necessary in order to create an informed population. Which, in a democracy, is essential for matters as weighty as how the most powerful nation in the world should be run.
So now we see a large number of people howling against scientific advancements even as they insist on blind plunder of things that they have not created and cannot recreate - things that they believe to be God's creation. And it is time to say that these people got it backwards. Creation is good; blind destruction is bad. Creation puts into the world something new; destruction takes away from it what one cannot recreate. Creation makes the world a richer, fuller, better place for oneself having been in it; destruction makes it a poorer, more barren, more unlivable place.
The problem is not intellect; it is stupidity. And it is only by addressing the same and moving people away from the same that one can do one's part toward making the world a livable place for one's children.