In one of the more perceptive pieces of commentary to appear in the Washington Post of late, Cinestate editor-in-chief Sonny Bunch made the astute observation earlier this year that “Environmentalists make good movie villains because they want to make your real life worse.” Pointing to comic book movie baddies such as Aquaman’s King Orm and the Avengers series’ Thanos, Bunch noted how radical environmentalists “make perfect villains for our times: well-intended enough to often seem somewhat reasonable, but meddlesome busybodies whose hopes and dreams are to radically reduce standards of living in order to effect some utopian scheme or another that will return the world — or worlds — to an unsullied Eden.”

To some, it might seem hyperbolic to compare the militant, misanthropic environmentalism of superhero movie villains to the green activists of the real world. But more and more, our environmentalists have started saying the quiet part out loud.