It's important to consider the motivations of any political group when dealing with them. There are certainly reasonable environmentalists...you can usually tell because they are roundly denounced by the extremists.

As an example, if you are a power plant developer, the approach you would take in dealing with an environmental group that is concerned about a power plant being built in a given area would depend on their goals. The environmentalists would usually fall into one of the following categories:

a) They want to insure that the plant will not pollute the air, damage the nearby waterways, create a toxic mess, or in some other way seriously harm the environment. If the plant builders can provide working solutions or answers to these questions, and be held liable for any real (not invented) problems, the environmentalists will support the plant's construction. This is how reasonable environmentalism is supposed to work, and most laymen who call themselves environmentalists fall into this category. If I give the impression that such environmentalists don't exist, it's not intended.

b) They will not support building a power plant under ANY circumstances at this particular site because they don't like having to live near even a safe power plant. These are just the NIMBY people, and this is at least an understandable reaction, if not a reasonable one. Given enough information, they sometimes can be made to change their minds.

c) They will not support building a power plant anywhere because they do not support technology in general and think there are too many plants in the first place. In fact, we should start tearing some down. By the way, capitalism sucks. So does the human race.

The reason I'm concerned is that so many of the environmentalists we see in the newspapers and testifying at hearings fall into this latter category, and they're the ones I don't like. The quotes I have given in the past are not from some oddballs who have just some website somewhere, but from leaders, movers and shakers in the environmental movement. David Brower and David Foreman are not guys working out of a house trailer.