Environmental group Friends of the Earth, meanwhile, criticised the Top Gear team claiming it appeared to have gone out of its way to be as crass and juvenile as possible. … The wrecking of vehicles for the show has not impressed Friends of the Earth campaigner Declan Allison.
“The wanton destruction of tens of thousands of pounds worth of machinery impresses no-one. It’s a wasteful extravagance and, in the middle of a global recession, in very poor taste,” he said.
In the broader picture, what is really annoying about the environmental purist movement is not just their utter incapacity to allow anyone to enjoy anything without a ritualistic expression of guilt for, you know, continuing to breathe and pollute the Earth with carbon dioxide. Rather, it is the legitimate suspicion that these people actually want to ruin everyone’s lives. Bainbridge’s quote from Jeremy Clarkson is indicative, but only gestures at the deeper problem:
Recently, Boris Johnson jokingly wondered what had happened to all those Trots and Bolsheviks from the 1970s. Boris, my dear chap, they never went away. And now there are many more of them, living among us, posing as normal, respectable members of the human race. It’s just that they’re not called Trots and Bolsheviks any more. They’re called environmentalists and health and safety officers. Think about it. A single health and safety man can inflict more damage on business and industry than an army of Red Robboes. And the goals of an environmentalist far exceed the aspirations of even the most hardbitten 1970s communist.
The real problem is indicated by that last line — the real goals of environmentalist extremists. Of course, to read their self-promotional materials, one would think they were merely interested in conservation — maintaining some wildlife and a few natural areas. Who could really condemn such noble goals?
But the real goals revealed by their patterns of behavior are far more malicious. Consider that the construction costs of every single factory and power plant are now dramatically inflated by the inevitable and protracted litigation forced by environmental groups that are never, ever satisfied with measures taken to mitigate environmental impacts. Given the fact that they object to every single site for every single major development project, the conclusion that they really oppose all development is inescapable. Their claims to only object to this or that particular element in each particular case is revealed as a sham pretty quickly when you look at the broader pattern of environmentalist behavior.
So how does wanting to protect the environment hurt people? Well, when they obstruct and delay road construction projects, they perpetuate unemployment and perpetuate problems of traffic congestion. (Ironically, this also increases pollution because of drivers sitting idle in congested traffic.) When they obstruct the construction of power plants, they raise the prospects of brownouts, with the attendant danger to life and safety that results. When they obstruct the construction of refineries, they raise gasoline prices and drive the working poor who can no longer afford to commute into unemployment. When they obstruct the construction of nuclear power plants, they perpetuate the dependence on oil. The bill of particulars goes on and on and on and on. The consistent theme is that environmentalist extremists don’t care about people and they don’t really even care about the environment.
They care about fighting and winning a war against modern industrial society. That’s it. They are the post-modern avatars of the Dark Ages.
Or maybe they just want to feel morally superior at any cost.
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