<But do you think that the Hudson would've been cleaned up without the hypergreen hysteria?

Perhaps not, I understand the point you are making.

The overkill's necessary, these days. It takes a lot of screaming "the sky is falling!" to get the average person to buy an umbrella or just come in out of the rain. You need a big club to make a dent in a society as complacent and self-satisfied as ours.

Isn't this elitism and if so and that's okay, isn't there a more efficient club?

I doubt that you see yourself as an elitist Robert but it does kinda sound that way doesn't it?

One of my big problems with liberalism is the tendency to softly shove things down throats because the great unwashed don't know what's good for them. A bigger problem I have is that it often appears that this assumption is correct.