Why is it that so many prominent environmental campaigners turn out to be such scumbags, sleazebags, hypocrites or frauds?

The latest to be exposed is, of course, New York’s ex- Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

When Schneiderman wasn’t busy – allegedly – “choking, beating and threatening” women, he was busy bullying the people he calls “climate deniers”.

Here he is on a video in 2014 declaring that “climate deniers have no place in public life.”

He was also one of the lead instigators of a scheme by liberal Attorneys General to use lawfare to harass fossil fuel companies such as Peabody Energy and Exxon Mobil. In 2016, he hosted 16 fellow Democrat AGs and former Vice President Al Gore to launch a coalition called AGs United for Clean Power.

“With gridlock and dysfunction gripping Washington, it is up to the states to lead on the generation-defining issue of climate change. We stand ready to defend the next president’s climate change agenda, and vow to fight any efforts to roll-back the meaningful progress we’ve made over the past eight years,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “Our offices are seriously examining the potential of working together on high-impact, state-level initiatives, such as investigations into whether fossil fuel companies have misled investors about how climate change impacts their investments and business decisions.”

My, how the wheel of fortune has turned since!

Schneiderman’s departure from the scene represents a major blow for the Climate Industrial Complex and its efforts to undermine the Trump administration’s environmental and energy reforms. The jubilation among skeptics has been unconfined, as E & E News reports:

“A lot of climate skeptics are smiling at his downfall because he was an out-of-control, really wacky guy who held a lot of power,” said Marc Morano, who runs the blog Climate Depot. Morano and his allies have been especially disdainful of the legal attempts Schneiderman led to hold Exxon Mobil Corp. and other oil companies accountable for global warming, calling him “the ultimate shakedown artist.” “Let’s take a moment to pause and take a look at the strategy of blaming energy companies for bad weather,” Morano said. He added that Schneiderman’s resignation and quick disappearance from the public scene will force climate activists to reconsider their approach. “He was the lightning rod,” he said. “He was the instigator. It definitely limits the movement when you take out the lead guy.”

Yup. But we still haven’t answered the question: why is it that so many prominent environmental campaigners turn out to be such reptiles?

Let me give you a few more examples:

Al Gore and the Portland massage therapist (one of several victims, allegedly, of his tentacular groping…)

Rajendra Pachauri, former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, exposed as a serial sex pest.

David Suzuki – Canada’s most feted eco-campaigner who just happens to be a dick who is extremely rude and – see also Gore – an appalling hypocrite:

Suzuki, who did not return calls to respond, spends a lot of time hectoring others about over-population (but he has five children), reducing our carbon footprint (he has a jet-set lifestyle of the rich and famous), living smaller (he owns four houses in B.C. and an apartment in Port Douglas, Australia) and much else besides.

Michael Mann – creator of that discredited artefact the Hockey Stick – who apart from being a hypersensitive and hyper-litigious bully likes to claim, falsely, that he won the Nobel Prize.

etc.

This is only a hypothesis – though it’s a lot more plausible, I think, than man-made global warming theory – but I think it might have to do with the well-observed phenomenon that unpleasant people are attracted to environmental causes in order to greenwash their image.

They’re a bit like sinners who in the past tried to expunge themselves of their earthly vices by engaging in particularly bracing acts of religious devotion.

Championing green causes is the modern equivalent of donning a hair shirt, or going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, or renouncing society altogether and living on top of a rock in the desert.

The difference is, of course, that there is no personal cost, no suffering involved. You just parade all your green virtue and, hey presto, it magicks away all your vices without any of the trouble of forcing yourself to become a better person.

This isn’t just true of green virtue-signalling, by the way. It’s true of people who espouse liberal politics generally.

Greens and liberals are always looking for dirt in the lives of leading conservatives. The psychological term for this is “Projection.”

James Delingpole is a writer, journalist, and columnist. He is the executive editor at Breitbart London Follow him on Twitter: @JamesDelingpole