It’s easy to poke fun at leftist nutjobs shrieking about global annihilation because Trump withdrew America from the Paris Accords. They are utterly ridiculous and unhinged. That they hysterically predict ludicrous consequences in the name of “science” exposes them as deluded and desperate people. Laughing at them is fine but the laughter should contain a a bit of unease. Deluded and desperate people can be and often are dangerous.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. They have already been convinced that Donald Trump is worse than Hitler. They believe that climate change has no cause other than the things that make our lives safer and more comfortable. In their minds, the Paris Accords have been inextricably linked to preventing the end of the world. They perceive America—the country who usually picks up most of the check for international efforts—withdrawing from the treaty as Trump literally handing down a death sentence on the entire planet.

During the tea party movement, the left was wringing hands and talking breathlessly about the threat of violence. Nancy Pelosi was close to tears in a press conference over the idea. They were eager to blame any crime or act of violence on the liberty movement, which was primarily concerned with out of control government spending and federal overreach. They thought a grandma in an American flag shirt who didn’t want her grandkids to get saddled with massive debt and socialized medicine was a member of a violent movement.

As a member of the tea party movement, I was willing to become politically active to oppose Barack Obama’s far left agenda. The thought of violence never crossed my mind. I have to say that if I actually thought the President was literally trying to destroy the world like some comic book super villain, I would probably consider a lot of extreme, unlawful actions, violence included. I mean, we’re talking about destroying the whole world here. What wouldn’t you do to stop that if you thought it was the president’s goal and that there was a real possibility of his succeeding?

Obviously this does not apply to every single person opposing the withdrawal, but plenty of blue checkmarks on Twitter were telling us over the last couple of days that we are in fact on the eve of destruction. They surely have a sizable bunch of followers who accept it uncritically or who have already come to the same hysterical conclusions on their own.

I suspect the vast majority of them are only childishly overreacting like a toddler who bumps his head while already in mid-tantrum. We’re told the vast majority of muslims are not violent. That doesn’t stop the few who are from causing a rather large amount of mayhem. It only takes a few climate jihadis who think they’re all that stands between mother earth and incineration to do something monumentally stupid.

I hope our law enforcement and national security apparatus is considering that possibility and preparing for it. There are already radical environmental groups who break the law and do a lot of property damage. It does not seem far fetched to me that others will sprout up even if only a tiny fraction of the hysterical sentiments about the Paris Accords are genuine. The idea might seem crazy to a rational person, but if someone is irrational enough to believe a policy is literally a death sentence for the entire planet then violence may seem to them as the only rational option.

If the alternative is literally the end of life on earth, what amount of collateral damage would seem disproportionate or extreme? How much death and destruction could you excuse in a fight to prevent the death and destruction of literally EVERYTHING.