The gospel of green
Environmentalism may not be considered a religion by its adherents, but it's getting easier to make that comparison all the time
Kevin Steel - June 4, 2007
If anyone has doubts that environmentalism has become a religion, then Al Gore, the failed U.S. presidential candidate who has been born again as a global warming guru, will put those doubts to rest. At the national convention of the American Institute of Architects in San Antonio on May 5, Gore continually spoke of how global warming had prompted "a new way of thinking" to save the planet. "It's in part a spiritual crisis," Gore preached. "It's a crisis of our own self-definition--who we are. Are we creatures destined to destroy our own species? Clearly not." Gore's ideas don't just have religious overtones, they are religious: spirituality, apocalypse, destiny, conversion, salvation.
That Gore would be talking "spiritual" about the environment, even to a crowd of yawning architects in Texas, is not surprising. His Oscar-winning documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is itself something of a leap of faith, so poorly does it represent the science on climate. Flawed though the film was, it proved popular enough to catapult Gore onto the speaking circuit, where he now commands $125,000 an appearance to sermonize about the "spiritual crisis." He is environmentalism's most popular itinerant preacher.
Gore might blanch at the idea of being called a prophet because of the religious connotations, but, more and more, environmentalism has taken on the characteristics of a religion. In Canada, Green party Leader Elizabeth May has been merging environmentalism and religion. On April 29, she delivered a guest sermon on climate change at the Wesley Knox United Church in London, Ont. Introduced to the congregation by a Liberal MP as a "prophet," May's over-the-top sermon made instant headlines. She took aim at fundamentalist Christians in the U.S.: "They are waiting for the end time in glee, and they unfortunately include President Bush." She said that the Harper government's approach to climate change "represents a grievance worse than Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis." Her message couldn't have been clearer: they are evil; hers is the only road to salvation.
In the 1960s, a few environmentalists actually believed their cause could not succeed unless it became a religion first. How close they've come to attaining that goal in a generation is perhaps best gauged by the growing body of chroniclers and critics of the new religion.
In 2003, author Michael Crichton kick-started the criticism with a widely circulated speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Crichton, who has written such bestselling
novels as State of Fear and Jurassic Park, pinpointed the main practitioners. "Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists," Crichton said, right after ranking it as "one of the most powerful religions in the western world." Crichton maintains the position that while an environmental movement is necessary, the conversion of the movement to religion is dangerous. His goal is to get the movement out of the "clutches of religion, and back to a scientific discipline."
Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., doesn't know if that's possible. "It's almost trite to say it because it's quoted so much, but G.K. Chesterton said, 'When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing--they believe in anything.' The loss of connection to the practice of Christianity, and in some cases Judaism, has left a lot of people with utterly meaningless lives," Ebell says. As they discover that, they want to find something. Environmentalism--saving the planet--fills the void.
Modern society is seeing an invasion of environmental morality. The green cause now influences what kinds of cars we drive, or even whether we should drive, what kinds of houses we buy, what we wear, what we eat, what we do each day with our garbage, and even, for some, how many children they will have. A May 7 news story in the London Sunday Times paraphrased a new report from a green think-tank, Optimum Population Trust: "Having large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanor in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags." Why? Because it turns out couples who had two children instead of three "could cut their family's carbon dioxide output by the equivalent of 620 return flights a year between London and New York."
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