Environmentalism as Religion, One Last Time
I promise not to belabor this point any further (well, unless something really juicy comes in...), but Jay Nordlinger, in the latest National Review, offers more observations [subscription needed] on the religious qualities of “secular” environmentalism, from his perch at Davos. Along the way, he cites my PowerBlog post from a couple weeks ago. The relevant passage:
The basic idea has gained traction at the top levels of the Catholic hierarchy, as this column by Cardinal George Pell of Sydney demonstrates. I must tip my hat to His Eminence, by the way, for introducing an important nuance: the most zealous promoters of global warming hysteria are not really “religious” in a Christian sense (that would give religion a bad name); they are more accurately described as “”superstitious."
In other words, you can contribute to an anti-global-warming fund in order to relieve your guilt at having used, for example, an airplane. I put this in Jacksonian terms (I mean Jesse, not Andrew): Don’t be emittin’ without remittin’. Later, Kevin Schmiesing of the Acton Institute will write that these remissions remind him of the indulgences of old, whereby you washed away your sins by your financial contributions. The notorious German friar Johann Tetzel (allegedly) said, “As soon a coin in coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” (He was a rhymer too, at least in English translation.) And more than a few of us have described a certain kind of environmentalism as a modern religion.
The basic idea has gained traction at the top levels of the Catholic hierarchy, as this column by Cardinal George Pell of Sydney demonstrates. I must tip my hat to His Eminence, by the way, for introducing an important nuance: the most zealous promoters of global warming hysteria are not really “religious” in a Christian sense (that would give religion a bad name); they are more accurately described as “”superstitious."
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