An ecogod and his zombies

That Justin Trudeau is a genial and pleasanttempered man may not be “a truth universally acknowledged,” but that he is as close to that perfect status as any human being is likely to get is not a proposition inviting dissent. From Flare to Vogue the oracles agree that our Prime Minister is the very model of a modern MajorGeneral ... er, Prime Minister. Just last week a grand covey of the rich and gorgeous at the Women in the World Conference pronounced him as “near perfect” as perfect can be (his only deficit “that he is not a woman,” a failing that, properly speaking, is more the mischief of blind Nature, than a flaw of his own devising).

Now, beyond the borders of rational opinion, out in the badlands of raw outrage and wild surmise, a distempered few offer bitterly dismissive terms on the subject of Trudeau. One of the volatile tribunes of Toronto’s Black Lives Matter movement, yearning for a cheap headline and clearly out of the reach of any plausible dictionary, called Trudeau “a white supremacist terrorist.”

#WhiteSupremacistTerrorist might stand as a college application essay these days, but as a descriptor of Justin Trudeau, it’s a careless snippet from the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. In the yet to be uttered words of Naomi Klein: as a Logo, that’s a No-go.

An even more cruel blast came roaring from the pen of one of our continent’s most vocal eco-missionaries, a Mr. Bill McKibben, founder of something called 350.org, which I understand to be one of the more apocalyptic chapters of the global warming cartel. McKibben recently published an opinion piece in the British Guardian newspaper. Before he turned his fierce attention on Trudeau, however, McKibben very generously favoured the world with his clinical assessment of Donald Trump.

He opined, first, that Trump was “a creep.” He offered no documentation to support the assertion, but I suspect we can be very confident he based it on the very best computer modelling, and at the very least 97 per cent of the world’s characterologists will agree with him. He extended this winsome digression by adding that Trump “was unpleasant to look at.”

That’s very easy for McKibben to say. From the streets of Paris to the beaches of Rio, wherever 30 or 40 thousand have jetted their way to save the world, the word is that Bill McKibben is the ecological troupe’s only (if you’ll pardon the phrase) world-class chick magnet. Wherever McKibben appears more than one ecoSister has almost involuntarily (it yearns to be said) been heard to mutter: “He can warm my globe anytime.”

Not all of us are blessed with the genes of an ecogod. McKibben has the insouciant glamour of Brad Pitt somehow miraculously crossed with the granite nobility of Gregory Peck at his most regal. Park him in a chinook and he’s Leonardo DiCaprio swarmed by supermodels. When the day dawns for a Mount Rushmore of the climate stars, Bill McKibben will get the first chiselling. So, we must forgive McKibben his face-ism; his outstanding physical charisma both overwhelms and pardons his sometimes cruel judgments of others.

But it was his words for our own Prime Minister — a man who, with no chauvinistic intent, I see as physiologically a rare actual peer of McKibben — that were most cruel and condescending. He said of Trudeau “He sure is cute,” which we can agree seems a tad dismissive, but he went full IED with the next phrase, to wit, saying Trudeau looks like “the planet’s only sovereign leader who appears to have recently quit a boy band.” Mr. McKibben, sir, please! Such rancour. Such rudeness. And what do you have against boy bands, may we ask?

The capper came in the peroration. After a few miserly compliments on some of Trudeau’s social policies and his standing as a feminist, he launched this devastating torpedo: “When it comes to the defining issue of our day, climate change, he’s a brother to the old orange guy in Washington.” And then the after-charge: “Trump is a creep ... but at least he’s not a stunning hypocrite.” In the immortal wail of Steve Martin: “Well, pardonnnnn me!”

Hypocrite. Cute. Boy Band. Brother to the old orange guy. Someone’s test tubes are a bit rattled.

Of Bill McKibben and his clangorous 350.org, we may only hope his science is better than his manners. The distemper of this fellow, his appetite for insult and personal reference, is, if I may revive a Hillary term, deplorable. If this is what the Green cadres think of Justin Trudeau — who, regardless of one’s view of his stand or the issue, is a genuine and committed advocate for the global warming cause — what, in the name of all that is green and growing, do they think of the rest of us?

McKibben is sour and bitter and small. But both his manner and his message have this to offer: they tell us that in the wild and frantic circles of green mania you are either utterly on board with everything they think and say — a perfect zombie follower — or you are nothing at all.

Green politics are fundamentalist in the dark meaning of that word. Either you believe and believe utterly or you are condemned to the outer darkness, where there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth. And they call this stuff “science.”