The environmental movement is not about the environment. It is about feelings of self worth.

Those who embrace environmentalism, conspiracy theories, politics or new age groups all share the same need - personal validation.

They suffer from a host of nagging inferiority complexes and psychological hang ups and need something to focus on outside themselves to compensate for these things.

So becoming a crusader for a cause, a believer in grand conspiracies, a member of the 'chosen' or a political activist all are just various manifestations of the same disease.

And, like a junkie, their "fixes" are increasingly short lived and they need more and larger actions, larger conspiracies to tilt against, grand missions of enlightenment and political enemies to destroy and blame for all their troubles.

Folks like Hansen will never stop tilting at windmills. If all their imaginary boogiemen were destroyed, there would be new boogiemen needed to replace them.

Individuals with such neuroses are generally destructive to civilization. They seek to destroy things to elevate themselves. Destroying is far easier than building. Conspiracy theorists see such grand evil in every mundane thing. For the environmentalists, western civilization is the grand evil. The automobiles, the factories the homes are all fair targets in such a destructively minded individual.

One would think that as they reach the end of their lives that the epiphany of what they have been doing would strike them with sudden force. Unfortunately, such is seldom the case. They merely wrap themselves in more layers of comforting frustration regarding their causes and the masses inability to value their sacred message, continually creating new outside forces to blame for their misery.

Hansen is just one example. Cindy Sheehan, BDS suffererers, Face on Mars folks all provide good examples of this psychological phenomenon.