Giving a paper yesterday at an interesting conference on wellbeing in an age of climate, I happened across the dark side of the green movement. I don't think I've met it face to face before.

Hosted by UWE's Centre for Psycho-Social Studies, there were academics, therapists and activists present including members of the Transition movement. The premise of the latter is that civilisation as we know it is unsustainable - currently heading for a carbon car crash as a result of our energy consumption - and so it works to develop alternative ways of living. It sounds not unreasonable, given you buy that interpretation of the carbon crisis. But for the folk in it I talked with, their conviction about the imminence of disaster excused a truly horrific politics.

The logic, more or less consciously articulated, is that if calamity is just around the corner, then that justifies a suspension of ethics as usual. Hence, China merits praise, because as a totalitarian regime it can act without the impediment of democracy - provoking the wish that we could have 'benevolent dictatorship' here. Alternatively, if you believe millions are going to die as a result of disruptive change, and probably billions need to die because of population overload, then the leap to desiring a holocaust becomes quite small - and so when I suggested they were implying 'bring it on', there was no resistance to the prospect. Terror is inevitable anyway.

What's doubly striking is that the individuals pretty much welcoming totalitarianism and/or mass famine are major beneficiaries of western capitalism - able to travel to and participate in mid-week conferences, for one thing. So I guess there's a kind of displaced guilt going on here, those who must die, those whose freedom can be sacrificed, being a kind of scapegoat for our sins. There's also the religious logic of apocalypticism at play, a myth of redemptive violence, only God is not the instigator of these ends times: Gaia is. And a third element I sensed was the consolation they found in holding something as certain, in this case the science that apparently predicts collapse in our lifetimes, possibly this decade. The inherent uncertainty of the science of the future, for which the slightest changes in the initial conditions provoke massively different outcomes, had passed by these followers of science, as had James Lovelock's observation that our knowledge of planet earth and her systems is characterised mostly by ignorance - though, they love Lovelock's undoubtedly bleak pessimism, of course.

I've no idea how many Transitionists nurse such fantasies. Perhaps it's harmless enough when confined to the pubs of Devon. But I came away hoping that the movement remains marginal, that their organising in politics has little impact.