Those were both very enlightening....
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to claim Communism is responsible for the extremes of the environmental movement. I would say that this is more about human nature. Political movements, especially anti-establishment movements attract narcissistic people who are more interested in belonging to a cause and getting people to look up to them.
Some examples of people and moments whose leaders are more interested (imo) in there self importance, and fighting a cause, regardless of the real consequences...
Occupy..
Climate debate
Anthony Watt's site "WUWT"Moon Landing Deniers. Hard to believe that a recent Gallup poll shows that 6% of Americans believe the moon landings were fake.
Flat Earth Society. If you want to see some of the most creative and well thought out false claims. Check these guys out.
Al Gore in all fairness ranks right up there with Anthony Watts and imo is another person who is more interested in maintaining his position as a global climate leader, rather then just be honest about the climate debate.
Patrick Moore, while I admit I can't really fairly judge the man, it's hard to avoid his new political affiliations. Follow the money and you'll find (allegedly) that he is connected to the nuclear industry, the logging industry and he consults for countries looking to attach a well known environmentalist name to a rubber stamp saying everything is ok.
I mean, let's be honest here....If a former well respected conservative flip flopped on some of his former core principles, the liberals would (and probably have) flocked to that person and would offer them up in a PR campaign to all that is wrong with that former Conservative's former positions. Conservatives would start looking for motives of this person and most of the time would find them, real or imagined.
Bottom line, I think the entire first half of the email is absolutely true. I would treat the latter half with some skepticism, but in all fairness is it possible that a person works in their own self interest can promote an agenda that is both true AND self serving? I suppose it's possible, but human nature will cause us all to have doubt, especially when we disagree with the cause in question.
Is Patrick Moore and example of this? What about Michael Moore?