I thought it was targeted at ecofascists who want the global south to stay poor because having clean water and malaria treatments is bad for the environment somehow.

Like there's a lot of people saying that China's ongoing industrialisation and raising the standard of living is bad. But China is actually implementing renewables much faster than the West did, so China's industrialization is not the same story. Now yes, there are problems with what China is doing. For example, as they transition away from coal they are selling their leftover coal to poorer and less advanced countries, and that's fucked. But this isn't a technological inevitability of industrialization, it's simply a policy failure. China is doing better than the West did, and China has the technological potential to be doing even better if their politicians so chose. So the fundamental assumptions of ecofascism are not true. China should be industrializing in a greener way, rather than remaining a production center for cheap plastic garbage the West uses, which is what ecofascists prefer.