{"id":10338,"date":"2010-09-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/environmentalism-as-religion"},"modified":"2020-09-26T14:06:24","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T18:06:24","slug":"environmentalism-as-religion","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/environmentalism-as-religion","title":{"rendered":"Environmentalism as Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>raditional religion is having a tough time in parts of the world. Majorities in most European countries have told Gallup pollsters in the last few years that religion does not \u201coccupy an important place\u201d in their lives. Across Europe, Judeo-Christian church attendance is down, as is adherence to religious prohibitions such as those against out-of-wedlock births. And while Americans remain, on average, much more devout than Europeans, there are demographic and regional pockets in this country that resemble Europe in their religious beliefs and practices.<\/p>\n

The rejection of traditional religion in these quarters has created a vacuum unlikely to go unfilled; human nature seems to demand a search for order and meaning, and nowadays there is no shortage of options on the menu of belief. Some searchers syncretize Judeo-Christian theology with Eastern or New Age spiritualism. Others seek through science the ultimate answers of our origins, or dream of high-tech transcendence by merging with machines \u2014 either approach depending not on rationalism alone but on a faith in the goodness of what rationalism can offer.<\/p>\n

For some individuals and societies, the role of religion seems increasingly to be filled by environmentalism. It has become \u201cthe religion of choice for urban atheists,\u201d according to Michael Crichton, the late science fiction writer (and climate change skeptic). In a widely quoted 2003 speech<\/a>, Crichton outlined the ways that environmentalism \u201cremaps\u201d Judeo-Christian beliefs:<\/p>\n\n\n

There\u2019s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there\u2019s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

In parts of northern Europe, this new faith is now the mainstream. \u201cDenmark and Sweden float along like small, content, durable dinghies of secular life, where most people are nonreligious and don\u2019t worship Jesus or Vishnu, don\u2019t revere sacred texts, don\u2019t pray, and don\u2019t give much credence to the essential dogmas of the world\u2019s great faiths,\u201d observes Phil Zuckerman in his 2008 book Society without God<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. Instead, he writes, these places have become \u201cclean and green.\u201d This new faith has very concrete policy implications; the countries where it has the most purchase tend also to have instituted policies that climate activists endorse. To better understand the future of climate policy, we must understand where \u201cecotheology\u201d has come from and where it is likely to lead.<\/p>\n\n

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\r\n\t\tFrom Theology to Ecotheology\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

T<\/span>he German zoologist Ernst Haeckel coined the word \u201cecology\u201d in the nineteenth century to describe the study of \u201call those complex mutual relationships\u201d in nature that \u201cDarwin has shown are the conditions of the struggle for existence.\u201d Of course, mankind has been closely studying nature since the dawn of time. Stone Age religion aided mankind\u2019s first ecological investigation of natural reality, serving as an essential guide for understanding and ordering the environment; it was through story and myth that prehistoric man interpreted the natural world and made sense of it. Survival required knowing how to relate to food species like bison and fish, dangerous predators like bears, and powerful geological forces like volcanoes \u2014 and the rise of agriculture required expertise in the seasonal cycles upon which the sustenance of civilization depends.<\/p>\n

Our uniquely Western approach to the natural world was shaped fundamentally by Athens and Jerusalem. The ancient Greeks began a systematic philosophical observation of flora and fauna; from their work grew the long study of natural history. Meanwhile, the Judeo-Christian teachings about the natural world begin with the beginning: there is but one God, which means that there is a knowable order to nature; He created man in His image, which gives man an elevated place in that order; and He gave man mastery over the natural world:<\/p>\n\n\n

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. [Genesis 1:28-29]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

In his seminal essay \u201cThe Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis<\/a>,\u201d published in Science<\/em> magazine in 1967, historian Lynn Townsend White, Jr. argues that those Biblical precepts made Christianity, \u201cespecially in its Western form,\u201d the \u201cmost anthropocentric religion the world has seen.\u201d In stark contrast to pagan animism, Christianity posited \u201ca dualism of man and nature\u201d and \u201cinsisted that it is God\u2019s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.\u201d Whereas older pagan creeds gave a cyclical account of time, Christianity presumed a teleological direction to history, and with it the possibility of progress. This belief in progress was inherent in modern science, which, wedded to technology, made possible the Industrial Revolution. Thus was the power to control nature achieved by a civilization that had inherited the license to exploit it.<\/p>\n

To White, this was not a positive historical development. Writing just a few years after the publication of Rachel Carson\u2019s eco-blockbuster Silent Spring<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, White shared in the concern over techno-industrial culture\u2019s destruction of nature. Whatever benefit scientific and technological innovation had brought mankind was eclipsed by the \u201cout of control\u201d extraction and processing powers of industrial life and the mechanical degradation of the earth. Christianity, writes White, \u201cbears a huge burden of guilt\u201d for the destruction of the environment.<\/p>\n

White believed that science and technology could not solve the ecological problems they had created; our anthropocentric Christian heritage is too deeply ingrained. \u201cDespite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe. Despite Darwin, we are not, in our hearts, part of the natural process. We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim.\u201d But White was not entirely without hope. Even though \u201cno new set of basic values\u201d will \u201cdisplace those of Christianity,\u201d perhaps Christianity itself can be reconceived. \u201cSince the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious.\u201d And so White suggests as a model Saint Francis, \u201cthe greatest spiritual revolutionary in Western history.\u201d Francis should have been burned as a heretic, White writes, for trying \u201cto substitute the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man, for the idea of man\u2019s limitless rule of creation.\u201d Even though Francis failed to turn Christianity toward his vision of radical humility, White argued that something similar to that vision is necessary to save the world in our time.<\/p>\n

White\u2019s essay caused a splash, to say the least, becoming the basis for countless conferences, symposia, and debates. One of the most serious critiques of White\u2019s thesis appears in theologian Richard John Neuhaus\u2019s 1971 book In Defense of People<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, a broad indictment of the rise of the mellifluous \u201ctheology of ecology.\u201d Neuhaus argues that our framework of human rights is built upon the Christian understanding of man\u2019s relationship to nature. Overturning the latter, as White hoped would happen, will bring the former crashing down. And Neuhaus makes the case that White misunderstands his own nominee for an ecological patron saint:<\/p>\n\n\n

What is underemphasized by White and others, and what was so impressive in Francis, is the unremitting focus on the glory of the Creator. Francis\u2019 line of accountability drove straight to the Father and not to Mother Nature. Francis was accountable for<\/em> nature but to<\/em> God. Francis is almost everyone\u2019s favorite saint and the gentle compassion of his encompassing vision is, viewed selectively, susceptible to almost any argument or mood…. It was not the claims of creation but the claims of the Creator that seized Francis.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Other Christian writers joined Neuhaus in condemning the eco-movement\u2019s attempt to subvert or supplant their religion. \u201cWe too want to clean up pollution in nature,\u201d Christianity Today<\/em> demurred, \u201cbut not by polluting men\u2019s souls with a revived paganism.\u201d The Jesuit magazine America<\/em> called environmentalism \u201can American heresy.\u201d The theologian Thomas Sieger Derr lamented \u201can expressed preference for the preservation of nonhuman nature against human needs wherever it is necessary to choose.\u201d (Stephen R. Fox recounts these responses in his 1981 book John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement<\/a><\/strong><\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n

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F<\/span>rom today\u2019s vantage, it seems that White\u2019s counsel has been heeded far and wide. Ecotheologies loosely based on concepts lifted from Hinduism or Buddhism have become popular in some Baby Boomer circles. Neo-pagans cheerfully accept the \u201ctree-hugger\u201d designation and say they were born \u201cgreen.\u201d And, most strikingly, Christianity has begun to accept environmentalism. Theologians now speak routinely of \u201cstewardship\u201d \u2014 a doctrine of human responsibility for the natural world that unites interpretations of Biblical passages with contemporary teachings about social justice.<\/p>\n

In November 1979, a dozen years after White\u2019s essay, Pope John Paul II formally designated Francis of Assisi the patron saint of ecologists. Over the following two decades, John Paul repeatedly addressed in passionate terms the moral obligation \u201cto care for all of Creation\u201d and argued that \u201crespect for life and for the dignity of the human person extends also to the rest of Creation, which is called to join man in praising God.\u201d His successor, Benedict XVI, has also spoken about the environment, albeit less stirringly. \u201cThat very ordinariness,\u201d argues a correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter<\/em><\/a>, \u201cseems remarkable. Benedict simply took for granted that his audience would recognize the environment as an object of legitimate Christian interest. What the matter-of-fact tone reveals, in other words, is the extent to which Catholicism has \u2018gone green.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

American Protestantism, too, has gone green. Numerous congregations are constructing \u201cgreen churches\u201d \u2014 choosing to glorify God not by erecting soaring sanctuaries but by building more energy-efficient houses of worship. In some denominations, programs for recycling or carpooling seem as common as food drives. Church-sponsored Earth Day celebrations are widespread.<\/p>\n

Even some evangelicals are turning toward environmentalism. Luis E. Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, speaks of their \u201cbroader environmental sensitivity\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n

Once it\u2019s translated into Biblical terms, [evangelicals] pick up the environmental banner using phrases that resonate with the community \u2014 \u201cCreation care.\u201d That immediately puts it in an evangelical context rather than the empirical arguments about the environment. \u201cThis is the world God created. God gave you a mandate to care for this world.\u201d It\u2019s a very direct religious appeal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

That said, the widely reported \u201cgreening of evangelicals\u201d shouldn\u2019t be exaggerated. Conservative evangelical leaders remain wary of environmentalism\u2019s agenda and of any attacks on industrial prowess that could be seen as undermining American national greatness. Many evangelicals are rankled by environmentalists\u2019 critique of the Genesis depiction of man\u2019s place in the natural order. And evangelicals are alert to any hint of pagan worship. Moreover, the available poll data \u2014 admittedly rather sparse \u2014 paints a mixed picture. In a 2008 survey conducted by the Barna Group<\/a>, a California-based public opinion firm that concentrates on church issues, 90 percent of the evangelical respondents said they \u201cwould like Christians to take a more active role in caring for creation\u201d (with two thirds saying they strongly agreed with that sentiment). But the term \u201cCreation care\u201d had not sunk in (89 percent of the respondents who identified themselves as Christian said they had never heard of it). And both the Barna survey and another 2008 survey conducted by Pew<\/a> found that evangelicals tend to be much more skeptical about the reality of global warming than other American Christians or the population at large.<\/p>\n

To the extent that evangelicals and environmentalists are in fact reaching out to one another, there can be benefits for each side. For churches with aging congregations, green issues reportedly help attract new, younger members to the pews. And what do environmental activists hope to gain by recruiting churches to their cause? \u201cFoot soldiers, is the short answer,\u201d says Lugo.<\/p>\n\n

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\r\n\t\tCarbon Calvinism\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

B<\/span>eyond influencing \u2014 one might even say colonizing \u2014 Christianity, the ecological movement can increasingly be seen as something of a religion in and of itself. It is \u201cquasi-religious in character,\u201d says Lugo. \u201cIt generates its own set of moral values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman Dyson, the brilliant and contrarian octogenarian physicist, agrees. In a 2008 essay in the New York Review of Books<\/em><\/a>, he described environmentalism as \u201ca worldwide secular religion\u201d that has \u201creplaced socialism as the leading secular religion.\u201d This religion holds \u201cthat we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible.\u201d The ethics of this new religion, he continued,<\/p>\n\n\n

are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world…. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists \u2014 most of whom are not scientists \u2014 holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Describing environmentalism as a religion is not equivalent to saying that global warming is not real. Indeed, the evidence for it is overwhelming, and there are powerful reasons to believe that humans are causing it. But no matter its empirical basis, environmentalism is progressively taking the social form of a religion and fulfilling some of the individual needs associated with religion, with major political and policy implications.<\/p>\n

William James, the pioneering psychologist and philosopher, defined religion as a belief that the world has an unseen order, coupled with the desire to live in harmony with that order. In his 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, James pointed to the value of a community of shared beliefs and practices. He also appreciated the individual quest for spirituality \u2014 a search for meaning through encounters with the world. More recently, the late analytic philosopher William P. Alston outlined in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/em> what he considered the essential characteristics of religions. They include a distinction between sacred and profane objects; ritual acts focused upon sacred objects; a moral code; feelings of awe, mystery, and guilt; adoration in the presence of sacred objects and during rituals; a worldview that includes a notion of where the individual fits; and a cohesive social group of the likeminded.<\/p>\n

Environmentalism lines up pretty readily with both of those accounts of religion. As climate change literally transforms the heavens above us, faith-based environmentalism increasingly sports saints, sins, prophets, predictions, heretics, demons, sacraments, and rituals. Chief among its holy men is Al Gore \u2014 who, according to his supporters, was crucified in the 2000 election, then rose from the political dead and ascended to heaven twice \u2014 not only as a Nobel deity, but an Academy Awards angel. He speaks of \u201cCreation care\u201d and cites the Bible in hopes of appealing to evangelicals.<\/p>\n

Selling indulgences is out of fashion these days. But you can now assuage your guilt by buying carbon offsets. Fire and brimstone, too, are much in vogue \u2014 accompanied by an unmistakable whiff of authoritarianism: \u201cA professor writing in the Medical Journal of Australia<\/em> calls on the Australian government to impose a carbon charge of $5,000 on every birth, annual carbon fees of $800 per child and provide a carbon credit for sterilization,\u201d writes Braden R. Allenby, an Arizona State University professor of environmental engineering, ethics, and law. An \u201carticle in the New Scientist<\/em> suggests that the problem with obesity is the additional carbon load it imposes on the environment; others that a major social cost of divorce is the additional carbon burden resulting from splitting up families.\u201d Allenby, writing in a 2008 article on GreenBiz.com<\/a>, continues:<\/p>\n\n\n

A recent study from the Swedish Ministry of Sustainable Development argues that males have a disproportionately larger impact on global warming (\u201cwomen cause considerably fewer carbon dioxide emissions than men and thus considerably less climate change\u201d). The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that those who suggest that climate change is not a catastrophic challenge are no different than Hitler…. E.O. Wilson calls such people parasites. Boston Globe<\/em> columnist Ellen Goodman writes that \u201cglobal warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

The sheer volume of vicious language employed to recast social and cultural trends in terms of their carbon footprint suggests the rise of what Allenby calls a dangerous new \u201ccarbon fundamentalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some observers detect parallels between the ecological movement and the medieval Church. \u201cOne could see Greenpeacers as crusaders, with the industrialist cast as the infidel,\u201d writes Richard North in New Scientist<\/em>. That may be a stretch, but it does seem that this new religion has its share of excommunicated heretics. For example, since daring to challenge environmentalist orthodoxy, Freeman Dyson has discovered himself variously described as \u201ca pompous twit,\u201d \u201ca blowhard,\u201d \u201ca cesspool of misinformation,\u201d and \u201can old coot riding into the sunset.\u201d For his part, Dyson remains cheerily unrepentant. \u201cWe are lucky that we can be heretics today without any danger of being burned at the stake,\u201d he has said. \u201cBut unfortunately I am an old heretic…. What the world needs is young heretics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of those making the case that environmentalism has become a religion throw around the word \u201creligion\u201d as a pejorative. This disdain is rooted in an uncontroversial proposition: You cannot reason your way to faith. That\u2019s the idea behind the \u201cleap of faith\u201d \u2014 or the leap to<\/em> faith, in Kierkegaard\u2019s original formulation: the act of believing in something without, or in spite of, empirical evidence. Kierkegaard argued that if we choose faith, we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason.<\/p>\n

So those on the right side of the political spectrum who portray environmentalism as a religion do so because, if faith is inherently not achievable through rationality, and if environmentalism is a religion, then environmentalism is utterly irrational and must be discredited and ignored. That is the essence of Michael Crichton\u2019s 2003 speech. \u201cIncreasingly,\u201d he said, \u201cit seems facts aren\u2019t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief.\u201d Environmentalism, he argued, has become totally divorced from science. \u201cIt\u2019s about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A similar attack from the right comes from Ray Evans, an Australian businessman, politician, and global-warming skeptic:<\/p>\n\n\n

Almost all of the attacks on the mining industry being generated by the environmentalist movement [in the 1990s] were coming out of Northern Europe and Scandinavia, and it didn\u2019t take me long to work out that we were dealing with religious belief, that the elites of Northern Europe and Scandinavia \u2014 the political elites, the intellectual elites, even the business elites \u2014 were, in fact, believers in one brand of environmentalism or another and regardless of the facts. Some of the most bizarre policies were coming out of these countries with respect to metals. I found myself having to find out \u2014 \u201cWhy is this so?\u201d \u2014 because on the face of it they were insane, but they were very strongly held and you\u2019d have to say that when people hold onto beliefs regarding the natural world, and hold onto them regardless of any evidence to the contrary, then you\u2019re dealing with religion, you\u2019re not dealing with science….<\/p>

Secondly, it fulfills a religious need. They need to believe in sin, so that means sin is equal to pollution. They need to believe in salvation. Well, sustainable development is salvation. They need to believe in a mankind that needs redemption, so you get redemption by stopping using carbon fuels like coal and oil and so on. So, it fulfills a religious need and a political need, which is why they hold onto it so tenaciously, despite all the evidence that the whole thing is nonsense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Leftists also sometimes disparage environmentalism as religion. In their case, the main objection is usually pragmatic: rationalism effects change and religion doesn\u2019t. So, for instance, the Sixties radical Murray Bookchin saw the way environmentalism was hooking up with New Age spirituality as pathetic. \u201cThe real cancer that afflicts the planet is capitalism and hierarchy,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI don\u2019t think we can count on prayers, rituals, and good vibes to remove this cancer. I think we have to fight it actively<\/em> and with all the power we have<\/em>.\u201d Bookchin, a self-described revolutionary, dismissed green spirituality as \u201cflaky.\u201d He said that his own brand of \u201csocial ecology,\u201d by contrast, \u201cdoes not fall back on incantations, sutras, flow diagrams, or spiritual vagaries. It is avowedly rational<\/em>. It does not try to regale metaphorical forms of spiritual mechanism and crude biologisms with Taoist, Buddhist, Christian, or shamanistic \u2018Eco-la-la.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n

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I<\/span>n the 1960s, a British chemist working with the American space program had a flash of insight. Planet Earth, James Lovelock realized, behaves like one complex, living system of which we humans are, in effect, some of its parts. The physical components of the earth, from its atmosphere to its oceans, closely integrate with all of its living organisms to maintain climatic chemistry in a self-regulating balance ideal for the maintenance and propagation of life.<\/p>\n

His idea turned out to have scientific value. However, Lovelock would probably just be a footnote in scientific history instead of the much-decorated intellectual celebrity he is, except for one thing: He named this vast planetary organism after the Greek goddess who personified the earth \u2014 Gaia \u2014 and described \u201cHer\u201d as \u201calive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only was his Gaia Hypothesis predictably controversial in the world of science \u2014 as befits a radical rethinking of earth\u2019s complex biosphere \u2014 but it was both revered and reviled by those who saw it as fitting in perfectly with tie-dyed New Age spirituality. This was true even though he describes his time at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena as one in which \u201cnot all of us were hippies with our rock chicks.\u201d For both good and ill, Lovelock not only gave the planet a persona, he created one for himself, becoming \u201cthe closest thing we have to an Old Testament prophet, though his deity is not Jehovah but Gaia,\u201d as the Sunday Times<\/em> recently noted.<\/p>\n

Even though Lovelock continues to go to great lengths to be an empiricist, his 2009 book The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning<\/a><\/strong><\/em> \u2014 published in the year he celebrated his ninetieth birthday \u2014 has been reviewed as a prophet\u2019s wrathful jeremiad of planetary doom, studded with parables of possible salvation for the few.<\/p>\n

Being embraced by the spiritual left has brought Lovelock fame and attention. Yet it\u2019s a marvel the challenges Lovelock has created for himself in changing the minds of zealots. In Vanishing Face<\/em>, for example, Lovelock, ever the scientist, open-mindedly considers the possibilities for last-ditch humans fighting global warming by intentionally reengineering the planet. One idea he discusses is retrofitting every commercial airliner on earth to allow them, as they fly, each to spray a ton or two of sulfuric acid into the stratosphere every day for the foreseeable future. The notion is that this will create molecules that will cause solar energy to be reflected back into space, replacing the reflectivity of the melting polar ice caps.<\/p>\n

So, you say to Lovelock: You\u2019ve succeeded in getting out this idea that the planet is a living organism. An awful lot of people are totally convinced by your hypothesis, and even view you as a prophet. How would you begin to sell this idea of injecting sulfuric acid into a living being that some view in religious terms?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, especially when you think about the role of the element sulfur in old theology,\u201d Lovelock replies. \u201cThe devil \u2014 the scent of sulfur reveals his presence. I hear what you\u2019re saying very clearly. I\u2019ve never had to sell it to religious greens so far. I don\u2019t look forward to the job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of environmentalism increasingly being faith-based, Lovelock says, \u201cI would agree with you wholeheartedly. I look at humans as probably having an evolutionary desire to have ideology, to justify their actions. Green thinking is like Christian or Muslim religions \u2014 it\u2019s another ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of saving Gaia, do you view carbon Calvinism as a net plus or a net minus?<\/p>\n

\u201cA net minus. You often hear environmentalists saying that one should do this or the other thing \u2014 like not fly \u2014 because not doing it can save the planet. It\u2019s sheer hubris to imagine we can save Gaia. It\u2019s quite beyond our capacity. What we have to do is save ourselves. That\u2019s really important. Gaia would like it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gaia would like it?<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. I\u2019ve got to be very careful here, because I get misinterpreted badly. I\u2019m not making out Gaia to be a sentient entity and that sort of thing. It\u2019s really metaphoric. So having said that \u2014 \u201d<\/p>\n

Gaia would think it important for us to save ourselves?<\/p>\n

\u201cExactly. Our evolution of intelligence is something of immense value to the planet. It could make, eventually, part of it, an intelligent planet. More able to deal with problems like incoming asteroids, volcanic outbursts and so on. So I look on us as highly beneficial and therefore certainly worth saving.\u201d<\/p>\n

The good news about religious greens, Lovelock says, is that they can be led. Saints like him can change minds. \u201cI have a personal experience here. Something like five years ago in Britain they did a big poll. There was hardly anybody\u201d in favor of nuclear power. Now \u2014 thanks in no small part to Lovelock\u2019s lobbying, at least in his own account \u2014 the great majority of Britons favor nuclear energy.<\/p>\n

Lovelock\u2019s faith in democracy is shared by Bj\u00f8rn Lomborg. He believes that people want to do good, and if you approach them on that basis, you can get them to listen to reason. Lomborg is the Danish author of The Skeptical Environmentalist<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (published in English in 2001), and the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. He has been pilloried for opposing the Kyoto Protocol and other measures to cut carbon emissions in the short term because of the evidence he sees that they don\u2019t achieve their goals. Instead, he argues that we should adapt to inevitable short-term temperature rises and spend money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions, as well as other pressing world crises such as malaria, AIDS, and hunger. He argues, for example, that getting Vitamin A and zinc to 80 percent of the 140 million children in the developing world who lack them is a higher priority than cutting carbon emissions. The cost, he argues, would be $60 million per year, yielding health and cognitive development benefits of over $1 billion.<\/p>\n

Despite his heresy, Lomborg thinks empiricism can prevail over faith. He believes that, in a democracy, if you keep calmly and rationally and sympathetically making your case, the great majority can come to think you are making more sense than the true believers. \u201cMy sense is that most people do want to do good,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n

They don\u2019t just want to pay homage to whatever god or whatever religion is the flavor of the year. They actually want to see concrete results that will leave this planet a better place for the future. So I try to engage them in a rational manner rather than in the religious manner. Of course, if people\u2019s minds are entirely made up there is nothing you can do to change it. But my sense is that most people are not in that direction. My sense is that in virtually any area, you have probably 10 percent true believers that you just cannot reach. And probably also 10 percent who just disparage it and don\u2019t give a hoot about it. But the 80 percent are people who are busy living their lives, loving their kids, and making other plans. And I think those are the 80 percent you want to reach.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

So why do so many people want to burn you at the stake?<\/p>\n\n\n

Oh sure. Certainly a lot of the high priests have been after me. But I take that as a compliment. It simply means that my argument is a lot more dangerous. If I was just a crazy guy ranting outside the religious gathering, then it might not matter. But I\u2019m the guy who says, maybe you could do smarter. Maybe you could be more rational. Maybe you could spend your money in a better way.<\/p>

A lot of people have been after me with totally disproportionate behavior if this were really a discussion on facts. But I continuously try to make this an argument about rationality. Because when you do that, and your opponents perhaps exaggerate, and go beyond the rational argument, it shows up in the conversation. Most people would start saying, \u201cWow, that\u2019s weird, that they\u2019d go this far.\u201d<\/p>

This is not to deny that global warming is also a serious problem. But then again I ask: why is it that we tackle it only in the way that current dogma talks about \u2014 cut carbon emissions right now and feel good about yourself? Instead of focusing on making new innovations that would [allow everyone] to cut carbon emissions in the long run much cheaper, more effectively, and with much greater chance of success.<\/p>

When you make those double arguments, I think the 80 percent we\u2019ve talked about start saying, \u201cThat guy makes a lot of sense. Why are the other people continuously almost frothing around the mouth?\u201d And always saying, \u201cNo, no, no, it has to be cut carbon emissions and that has to be the biggest problem in the world.\u201d<\/p>

I think that\u2019s the way to counter much of this discussion. It\u2019s not about getting your foot into the religious camp as well. It\u2019s simply to stand firmly on the rational side and keep saying, \u201cbut I know<\/em> you want to do good in the world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

Lovelock and Lomberg, prophet and heretic, honored and reviled, one hoping for action today and the other expecting solutions tomorrow \u2014 yet each professes confidence in an eventual democratic endorsement of his plan. Talk about a leap of faith.<\/p>\n\n

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\r\n\t\tThe New Religion and Policy\t<\/h5>\r\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

T<\/span>he two faces of religious environmentalism \u2014 the greening of mainstream religion and the rise of carbon Calvinism \u2014 may each transform the political and policy debate over climate change. In the former case, the growing Christian interest in stewardship could destabilize the political divide that has long characterized the culture wars. Although the pull of social issues has made the right seem like a natural home for evangelicals, a commitment to environmentalism might lead them to align themselves more with the left. Even if no major realignment takes place, the bond between evangelicals and the right might be loosened somewhat. (And beyond politics, other longstanding positions may be shaken up. Activists and scientists who long pooh-poohed evangelicals because of their views on evolution or the life questions will have to get accustomed to working with the new environmental \u201cfoot soldiers,\u201d and vice versa.)<\/p>\n

A deeper concern is the expansion of irrationalism in the making of public policy. Of course, no policy debate can ever be reduced to matters of pure reason; there will always be fundamentally clashing values and visions that cannot be settled by rationality alone. But the rhetoric of many environmentalists is more than just a working out of those fundamental differences. The language of the carbon fundamentalists \u201cindicates a shift from [seeking to help] the public and policymakers understand a complex issue, to demonizing disagreement,\u201d as Braden Allenby has written. \u201cThe data-driven and exploratory processes of science are choked off by inculcation of belief systems that rely on archetypal and emotive strength…. The authority of science is relied on not for factual enlightenment but as ideological foundation for authoritarian policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is nothing unusual about human beings taking more than one path in their search for truth \u2014 science at the same time as religion, for example. Nor is there anything unusual about making public policy without sufficient data. We do it all the time; the world sometimes demands it.<\/p>\n

The good news about making public policy in alliance with faith is that it can provoke a certain beneficial zeal. People tend to be more deeply moved by faith than by reason alone, and so faith can be very effective in bringing about necessary change \u2014 as evidenced by the civil rights movement, among others.<\/p>\n

The bad news is that the empirical approach arose in no small part to mitigate the dangers of zeal \u2014 to keep blood from flowing in the streets. A strict focus on fact and reason whenever possible can avert error and excess in policy. But can someone who has made a faith of environmentalism \u2014 whose worldview and lifestyle have been utterly shaped by it \u2014 adapt to changing facts? For the one fact we reliably know about the future of the planet\u2019s climate is that the facts will change. It is simply too complex to be comprehensively and accurately modeled. As climatologist Gavin Schmidt jokes, there is a simple way to produce a perfect model of our climate that will predict the weather with 100 percent accuracy: first, start with a universe that is exactly like ours; then wait 14 billion years.<\/p>\n

So what happens if, say, we discover that it is not possible to return the environment to the conditions we desire, as James Lovelock expects? What happens if evidence accumulates that we should address climate change with methods that the carbon Calvinists don\u2019t approve of? To what extent, if any, would devotees of the \u201cnatural\u201d accept reengineering the planet? How long will it take, if ever, for nuclear power to be accepted as green?<\/p>\n

In the years ahead, we will see whether the supposedly scientific debates over the environment can really be conducted by fact and reason alone, or whether necessary change, whatever that may turn out be, will require some new Reformation. For if environmental matters really have become matters of faith \u2014 if environmentalism has become a new front in the longstanding culture wars \u2014 then what place is left for the crucial function of pragmatic, democratic decision-making?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joel Garreau on energy sinners and carbon Calvinism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16445,"template":"","article_type":[13],"noteworthy_people":[],"topics":[4997,5031,2268],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/10338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=10338"},{"taxonomy":"noteworthy_people","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noteworthy_people?post=10338"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=10338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}