And environmentalists have gone from being friendly towards the environment to being outright anti human.
Their logic goes that if people didn't exists the environment would benefit.
Which is true, but seriously, fuck em.
That's not true. The environment would not benefit if people didn't exist.
The environment simple exists, no matter what.
When you reify and anthropomorphize 'The Environment' and consider what is to its (imaginary, metaphorical) harm/benefit, you concede the argument to the anti-human ManBearPig lunatics.
We don't say 'the number line would benefit if transcendentals like pi didn't exist' because there are no objective criteria to measure harm/benefit to things which are not alive, have no intentionality/goals/feelings, and only exist as conceptual metaphors inside humans brains/memes.