What's the Difference Between a Developer and an Environmentalist?

A developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods.

An environmentalist is someone who already owns a house in the woods.

Via Ace, Patrick Moore's Confessions of a Greenpeace Founder. Moore has been out and proud from Greenpeace for some time, but here he spells out where things went wrong:

Some activists simply couldn't make the transition from confrontation to consensus; it was as if they needed a common enemy. When a majority of people decide they agree with all your reasonable ideas the only way you can remain confrontational and antiestablishment is to adopt ever more extreme positions, eventually abandoning science and logic altogether in favour of zero-tolerance policies.

And this is precisely what people don't like about environmentalists: their zealotry and puritanical will to damn the Industrial Revolution. They're angry Romantics with a furry fetish.

The idea that we cannot pollute our land has taken hold. But some pollution will continue as long as humans will need a source of energy. And I am deeply suspicious of any alternative fuel that requires massive government support. If it truly works, it will work on its own.

The Industiral Revolution has created problems for the planet, but it is also the only way to address those problems. If the Environmentalists really cared about the earth, they'd stop standing in the way of its saviors.