It has been mildly amusing to read some of the vitriol that has been hurled at those at the Camp for Climate Action. Mahatma Gandhi was attributed with a famous quote: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." And so it will be in the case of modern pro-environmental movements.

All the talk this week in the press has been about how these "hippies" were so smug and preachy, and probably flew to Heathrow to attend the camp. Are environmentalists full of contradictions? Do they not practice what they preach?

Well, who isn't? You show me a person without contradiction and I'll show you a robot. We all have contradictions between how we want to behave and how we end up behaving. Environmentalists are no different, though when I got there last week they were extremely serious about practising what they preached.

Do they suffer from feeling smug or superior to others? I suspect that is more likely to be the case with those who keep announcing that these enviro-Nazis should get a job.

But most ironically, we live in a society where a constantly hypocritical tabloid press take very seriously a highly hypocritical and evasive political class. The same people who lecture us on spreading peace and democracy while selling weaponry to dictatorships, dropping cluster bombs and using chemical weapons. And they're accusing the greenies of preaching?

I'm still waiting for predictions of "hoax suspect packages" to come true. I suspect they won't.

The fact of the matter is that environmentalists constitute a very broad church. Some may want to ban air travel completely. Others see capitalism as the inherent problem. I don't have a problem with either.

I would like to see air travel reflect its true market prices. The government could get rid of the subsidy on aviation fuel, let airlines compete for slots at Heathrow and factor in a cost for the air and noise pollution. The problem is that economic incentives are skewed towards perpetuating and encouraging further pollution without cost.

To this extent events such as Camp for Climate Action are important because the goal is not only to get people to think of their own actions, but continue putting pressure on our government and businesses to change their behaviour. Plus, of course, helping build networks across this important movement.

The most appalling behaviour has been that of the police, who tried their best in this case, as they have been for the past few years, to trample on one of this country's finest traditions - political protest. To their credit the protestors have resisted turning to violent behaviour, despite police brutality.

As someone pointed out to me yesterday, "I guess it's easier to baby-sit a bunch of hippies rather than actually go out and chase real stories/scary criminals."

One last point: please don't try to play the China card. As someone else famously said, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.