Green militants: Saving the world through terror

What do Osama Bin Laden and radical environmentalists have in common? Terrorism and hate for America.

What do Osama Bin Laden and some radical environmentalists have in common? They’re both terrorists and believe that America is evil. They are also not doing much to promote the cause of environmentalism.

A green propaganda film called “No Pressure,” created by the green organisation 10:10, released earlier last month, provides an alarming insight into the mind of an ‘eco-fascist.’

The four-minute-long video shows a teacher casually exploding students who refuse to cut carbon emissions. Yes, explode – she presses a button and the students are ripped to pieces, and that’s putting it mildly. 10:10 withdrew the video within 24 hours following a flood of criticism and has since apologised saying that it “missed the mark.”

While I staunchly stand for environmental conservation and believe that it is essential to being a responsible human being – especially as the recent floods showed us the price of ignoring and abusing the environment – the emergence of this fringe of extremists (like in every ideology) seems to harm the cause rather than earn it converts.

While watching the video in disbelief, almost hoping it was a dark-humoured take on what I thought were mere ‘preachy’ eco-freaks, it became apparent that it’s an actual, well-produced advert featuring a celebrity or two.

And while one can take relief in knowing that the video is obviously fictitious, it is reminiscent of an incident that took place over a month ago in the US.

‘Environment militant’, as termed by the media, James Lee took three hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters while wearing explosives. Lee, who was shot dead by the police, had for two years protested against what he called commercialism in Discovery Channel’s environment programming.

More recently, in an audiotape aired on the internet, Bin Laden, or a character claiming to be the al Qaeda leader, expressed concern about global climate change, while referring to the recent floods in our country. “The number of victims caused by climate change is very big ... bigger than the victims of wars,” said the voice.

One rather wishes Bin Laden had stayed away from expressing sympathy for flood victims and the environment.