Spoiled Little Brats

What do activists want, and why is it never enough?

Have you ever noticed when a government policy is announced, the NGOs always cry out that so much more needs to be done? Even when most would consider them as having achieved a victory (eg, products banned or restrictions imposed), the activists are always calling for more. And even if their campaign agenda is completely satisfied, they will come back demanding something else. Why is this?

I have come to look at environmental activists like spoiled children, unable and unwilling to compromise, ready to go into a full tantrum until they get their way and, on most issues, completely unreasonable in their demands and expectations. Like the sociopaths and narcissists most are, they are not concerned about the consequences of their juvenile manipulation.

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Most environmental activist zealots are not interested in improving the world, better health or progress on the environment. They are driven by change. They do not like where their society is (they never have and never will be) so what they want is change/revolution/disruption – even anarchy is better than a stable, functioning status quo. Their chief change objective is to end capitalism. If degrowth will lead to deindustrialization and increased poverty in the West, so be it. And should their campaigns succeed, they just up the demands to the next level since it is change they are after and nothing more.

Activists call this constant demand for change part of the necessary “transition” we need to make to survive as a species. So wherever the activists campaign, they frame the narrative within the ongoing transition, be it an energy transition, food system transition, mobility transition, economic and industrial transition, political transition … Every decision, every public policy needs to be made within the context of advancing these omnipresent transitions.

How far will these transitions need to go? Until when?

Until Sri Lanka.

Campaigners in Sri Lanka had been pushing the envelope for years before the government announced they would completely stop using synthetic fertilizers and crop protection products. Glyphosate was banned in 2015 and then reauthorized when Sri Lankan tea production suffered, but this hardened the campaigners. There was a rise in unexplained kidney disease occurrence that the activists were claiming was based on the use of pesticides. Foreign activist groups were flooding the media with demands to transition to organic agriculture. Each government decision emboldened the activists to push for stricter measures. Finally, with the government facing a trade deficit and foreign currency shortage, they agreed to the environmental zealots endless demands to go full agroecological. Vandana Shiva claimed it was a great victory until, well, it wasn’t and Sri Lanka’s agriculture, the economy and the government collapsed.  

The activist reaction to the decimation of the Sri Lankan economy, farming yield and export market was pure gold. They claim that the transition to full organic agriculture production failed because the government needed more time – even decades. OK, then why did the activists push so hard to have the government immediately impose these draconian measures? Surely if the activists advising the government knew that the transition would need considerable time, they would have said so. Like children, they didn’t know how to stop or be patient. They relentlessly pushed the Sri Lankans … over a cliff.

Better is the Enemy of Perfect

Zealots want an ideal world, pure and perfect, and are willing to see the destruction of the environment to attain it.

• They don’t want to see plastics recycled; they want to see the use of plastics eliminated so they campaign against measures to reduce plastic waste.

• They don’t want to see crop protection techniques that use fewer pesticides and provide higher crop yields; they want to transition agriculture to fully organic (and then fully agroecological … and then permaculture … and then biodynamic…).

• A world without coal-based energy is not enough; they are calling for the immediate abandoning of fossil-fuels (including natural gas) and a full shift to renewables only. But that is not enough. We need to shut down all hydroelectric power and nuclear reactors.

• And as for GMOs, even vitamin A fortified rice given to farmers free from patents to reduce infant mortality in developing countries is intolerable. They demand an end to any seed breeding enhancements so the 500,000 children afflicted by Vitamin A Deficiency annually will have to find another way to survive.

The consequences of this zealot quest for perfection are catastrophic. Less plastic is being recycled, more meadows and forests are being plowed under for low-yielding organic food production and more coal is being burnt in Germany following the closure of their nuclear reactors. But green purity must prevail … even if they destroy the environment in the process.

Next to their “transition” buzzword is the activist demand for “zero”: zero waste, zero (synthetic) pesticides, net-zero carbon emissions … All of these demands are impossible to meet of course, but within the policy process, these activist children have zero tolerance for compromise and they are holding regulators to policy objectives doomed to suffocate consumers, businesses, the environment and the economy.

What can policymakers do?

Activists will always be exaggerating, embellishing and dramatizing the situation for emotional effect. They will always be overstating the risks, playing the hyperbole and creating imaginary scenarios. They do this because, like children, they are relentlessly committed to winning (achieving change) without concern for the consequences. This leaves activist campaigners prone to lying, cheating and manipulating the process. They don’t follow rules and often (like Greenpeace spectacles) celebrate when rules are broken (why most NGOs do not have ethical codes of conduct).

So the first step for policymakers is to stop believing whatever they say. Activists worked hard to destroy trust in industry, but that does not mean they should not themselves be fact-checked. Most of them have art history or politics diplomas so regulators need to seek expert, scientific advice.

Any compromise activists are forced to accept is considered a setback or momentary failure (from which they will continue their campaign the next day). Any policy victory is considered as a means to up the bar to the next demand. So policymakers need to understand how that their policy compromises won’t end there and learn to cut the discussions and draw a line on regulatory engagement.

But how should policymakers consider these activists? Like any children, they need to be kept in line and not given free rein to do and say what they want. When children are having tantrums, giving them what they want is the last thing parents should do (no matter how public their juvenile outbursts may be). The best strategy for parents (and policymakers) is to ignore the spoiled little brats. When they realize they can’t get everything they want, they just might stop their infantile manipulation.