Once you realize that their agenda (the leadership's) is the eradication of capitalism and the installation of socialism, they become much easier to understand.
I beg to differ. Though I agree that socialism and the eradication of capitalism is a means, I don't think that socialism is the goal. As a Christian, I am brought up to be rather pessimistic about the human condition, and so far society, using morality as a barometer, hasn't disproved this premise.
I don't think that the eradication of capitalism and the installation of socialism had anything to do with the banning of Freon and DDT. Freon is the least expensive and most efficient refrigerant available. Refrigeration is key to the preservation of food. Making the preservation of food more difficult and expensive preceeds famine. DDT has been used for decades to practically eradicate Malaria and other diseases common to turd world countries. Most estimates show that the use of DDT saved over a half a million lives annually just from preventable Malaria alone. DDT is a great tool in the war against famine. Presently the enivornmental movement seems to consider death through starvation and plague as their preferred means of population control. Combine their deeds with overtly misanthropic associations such as "Zero Population Growth" and all of their miscreant derivatives who favor abortions, forced sterilizations and condoms, and you have another leg of the stool. Another leading cause of population control is war and purges. And those Leftists that support Saddam and other tyrants through their protests against moral nations that take a dim view of such monstrosities, are in effect rooting for the "war and purge" leg of the population control stool. (double entendre intended)
I maintain my position that environmentalism is a tool of misanthropes who wish to see the deaths of billions of other people so they can frollic in their utopian gardens alone.