[Thoro]

If these morons had their way we would go back to 14th century living, burning coal to stay warm, chopping down trees so we could have fire to eat and open sewers to preserve the fresh water.

I always love how this romantic idea conveniently forgets that under such conditions the life expectancy will drop significantly. Guess it's hard to sell that idea with that caveat.

[JasonC]

The most moderate greens, technocrat and scientific types mostly, want the equivalent of $200 a barrel oil in order to make solar power viable. They still want a technological civilization, but one run by planners and engineers, not companies. They are socialists and futurists, but not anti-technology.

The committed activist greens are more ideological than that, and are against modern technological civilization root and branch. They want a "die back" to hunter gatherer existence, a tenth the present population at most. It is "our" responsibility to other species. "We" are being selfish. Yada yada. 9/10ths of mankind dies, technology and science disappears, superstitious nature worship replaces it. (Just disinventing industry isn't enough; if science stays, it will come back. So science is an enemy too). That is their idea of utopia. (The unabomber was this nutty, if you want an example of the mindset. It is not rare).

The radical fringe thinks that isn't enough. They call mankind a cancer on the planet. Disinventing industry and science aren't enough, because they remain possible. Some future mankind might do it again and wreck the planet. Since the whole point of everything is to achieve a steady state in which nothing dynamic happens or has a history, to avoid this horrible possibility, a die back is insufficient. Mankind must be eradicated. They call themselves the "human extinction movement." Their fantasies center on mega plagues that wipe out mankind and let the birds and the fishes and the cute little bunny rabits have the place. (And the sharks - who are more principled and upbeat than this lot).

Green ideology is a layer cake of madness, with known mistakes based on economic errors on top, descending through simplistic superstitions and blather, arbitrarily far, into the bottomless pits of hatred, insanty and evil. It deserves frontal assault, not the coddling most pols treat it with.