Environmentalism’s dark side

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Chris Packham, the BBC’s bird-watching personality, recently commented that Barclays Bank customers should “stick your head in a bucket of fuel and set fire to it.”

According to political commentator Brendan O’Neil, Packham’s protest exposes a strain within modern environmentalism where extreme views often cross into outright disdain for people.

O’Neil writes that the remarks suggest an “Old Testament-level loathing” for those Packham perceives as guilty of environmental harm, in this case just being a customer of a bank that also has fossil fuel companies as clients. 

The absence of media outrage following his statement contrasts sharply with the intense coverage others would face for similar comments against leftists, writes O’Neil, suggesting a double standard in how “hateful speech” is addressed. 

O’Neill argues that Packham’s rhetoric reflects a broader green ideology that increasingly views humanity as a scourge on the Earth. Some environmentalists, like David Attenborough and James Lovelock, even label humans as a “plague.”

As O’Neill points out, this “weirdo green death cult” aligns with groups advocating for population control. 

“I know we’re meant to fear the thoughts and words of uneducated brutes, but it’s the thinking of the upper classes that most often leaves me cold. There’s a deep strain of misanthropy in modern eco-campaigning that sometimes crosses the line into outright dreaming of human death,” he writes. 

Read more over at Spiked