The Green Movement as Religion....
An important article....green is the new fascism...
Whatever your views on global warming, the term "climate change denial", and the speed with which it has become part of everyday language, shouldn't be welcomed. The term is reductive, as well as offensive in its connotations.
It encapsulates the way the environmental movement, for all its good intentions, is increasingly adopting the sanctimonious, hectoring and stifling attributes of organised religion. To question climate change today is to be cast as a denier of an absolute truth.
That people who used to be called "climate change sceptics" are now called "deniers" is quite deliberate. The aim is to suggest that climate change scepticism is somehow akin to Holocaust denial. The moral repugnance we feel for the latter, we should essentially feel for the former. The connection is subliminal mostly, but some commentators have been more than happy to spell it out.
British journalist Mark Lynas wrote: "I put (climate change denial) in a similar category to Holocaust denial — except that this time the Holocaust is yet to come, and we still have time to avoid it. Those who try to ensure we don't will one day have to answer for their crimes." In Nuremberg-style trials, one presumes.
Guardian columnist and author George Monbiot wrote: "Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and unacceptable as Holocaust denial."
Closer to home, Margo Kingston wrote: "David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial. Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all."
Such attempts at moral equivalence are deeply repugnant and, frankly, stupid. The murder of 6 million Jews happened; the worst consequences of climate change are yet to happen, and we can't even say with certainty what they will be. To start judging people guilty for denying things that haven't happened yet — for having contrary thoughts — is surely to trump Orwell's nightmare vision.
It also corrupts the central tenet of science — that hypotheses are there to be tested; to be verified or falsified. As scientist Thomas Huxley said of his discipline, "scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin". The overwhelming majority of scientists believe in man-made climate change. No argument from me. But when you read or hear that "the jury is in" on climate change, or the "science is settled", alarm bells should ring. Science is never really settled. It can always be challenged. Science that isn't open to challenge isn't science; it's more like faith.
posted by GayandRight @ 9:18 AM
3 Comments:
Couldn't agree with you more Fred. Other ways that environmentalism resembles (bad)religion:
-Its proponents want to regulate even the most banal facets of your life like how many squares of toilet paper you use
-The purchase of indulgences in the form of carbon offests
-Tithes, like those proposed for the City of Toronto
-Rampant hypocrisy, in which the rules imposed on the hoi polloi do not apply to the elite
-An arbitrary designation of the beginning of time, so that we don't need to consider who is responsible for the end of the last ice age
The Church of Kyotology - the new religion. Heretics - beware!
I very clearly remember my middle school years when the gloom and doom of the environmental movement in the late sixties proclaimed that there was no way that our world could withstand another 20 years. It made me into an avid environmentalist. I have ever since used the reduce, reuse, and recycle model for my private life.
The last 40 years have seen the advent of everything disposable and yet our world has changed very little in that time period. Almost nothing can be repaired, which is key to reducing consumption, and yet there have not been great changes.
Now the mantra is climate change and I don't believe it for a moment. I'm wondering what kind of a scam is being perpetrated on us this time.
Yes, I'm still continuing with the frugal lifestyle. It's been something that has been practiced in my religion and culture for hundreds of years. It's called, 'waste not, want not'. Just like we switched from wood to oil in the early seventies and then to natural gas in the eighties, we will switch to solar, wind, or geothermal within the next couple of years.
The ingenuity of mankind has made it fairly easy to continue to make our environment healthier and I firmly believe it will continue to be easier in the future.
Take as a very recent example, the invention, by a couple of Isreali students of a gadget / machine that can extract dew out of the air in even the driest climate for fresh pure drinking water.
With that, it will eliminate the need to use dangerous chemicals to purify water for drinking. It also eliminates the need to haul or pipe water long distances to have a clean safe water supply.
M.K.
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