Some in the environmental movement are squealing about the hits they are taking about the tsunami. The wave had barely receded before the wacko fringe began beating the climate change drum and linking it to the tsunami, claiming that it is a taste of what is to come as a consequence of climate change or that it was even caused by climate change. Every interest group from mangrove and reef advocates to multinational reinsurance companies used the tsunami as a platform to advance their agenda. The backlash against their opportunism has apparently stung a bit.

At a time when all good people were laser focused on the need for relief efforts and the longer term rebuilding that would continue for the better part of a decade the jackals and carrion eaters on the fringe of the environmental movement gorged themselves.

The defense some use is that they didn't profiteer on the disaster, that it was just some fringe wackos and that by criticizing the whole environmental movement for the actions of a few the critics are themselves profiteering on the disaster.

Rubbish. It isn't just that this is a weak and unconvincing argument, it is that it is intellectually and morally bankrupt. The primary responsibility for opposition to the destructive acts of fringe wackos rests with the main body of their movement. The first and most vocal denunciation of the wackos should have come from environmentalists who resented having their ideas trivialized and parodied by nutters, and they ought to be piling on now.

They were silent, even a little defensive, and only after the backlash sought to distinguish themselves from the fringe and even then only as a opportunity to lash out at the backlash. The fact is that they lent tacit support to the nutters and enjoyed their attacks even if there was some small uneasiness about the nonsense they were spouting. They were enemies of environmental movement enemies and so friends.

It doesn't wash and it is yet another instance of the self defeating behavior of paleo-environmentalists. The antics of extremists and nutters have earned paleo-environmentalists the reputation of being intellectually and morally suspect as well as being an aesthetic disaster. They have come to be seen as being stupid, mean-spirited and ugly. Everything they say has a bad aroma and their support for any policy dooms it to defeat, guilt by association.

They desperately need to clean themselves up, to find the courage to climb up into the attic with an axe and dispatch the crazy aunt that hides there in the day and terrorizes the neighborhood at night. She lives in their house and shares their table. It is in their interest to do something about it because if others do the job they will come through the front door and wreck the joint in the process. But even worse is the prospect that no one will do the job, leaving the environmental movement to twist in the wind, unable to reform itself, and so becoming increasingly irrelevant as it continues to take idiotic positions on every issue.