I think perhaps you are right concerning (many of) the rank and file, but many on the leadership level certainly do regard these things as power levers. I'd say that all those anti globalist folks + all the "greens" think of it that way.
But even if they follow the Left in their pursuit of these causes out of idealism, the totalitarian results will be the same.
I remember your crow story, but not the possum one.
We have to adjust our arguments to reflect the desired audience... the voters and citizens. That is what the left does. They talk to kids about greener places and show pictures of endangered species. There's is a prettier solution than ranting about UN land grab oppression. We are killing ourselves with the voters ad pushing them more and more into the hands of those with the better sales pitch.
We aren't talking to ELF. We aren't going to convince them first. We are talking to people who see strip malls where they used to see trees, and stories of wild salmon and fuzzy critters disappearing. They don't go to the hatcheries where record levels of salmon are returning every year but not mentioned because hatchery fish don't count. They don't know about it. We need to help them. We need to look like we want to live in a pretty world too, we just have a different way of getting there.