Joel Garreau, on environmentalism as religion. It has all the earmarks, and it’s the only one that’s allowed to be taught in the public schools. In fact, with so many adherents in government (and particularly among Democrats) you could even say that it’s a state-sponsored violation of the First Amendment.
4 thoughts on “Worshipping Gaia”
Comments are closed.
It’s one thing to have innocuous beliefs, such as reincarnation beliefs. It’s another to have beliefs that require massive, dogmatic restructuring of society.
I think the key problem is what do we do about it? Here, the article discusses that very thing. The key is that people want to improve things. If you can rationally argue that the religious fix doesn’t work as advertised, especially by providing current real world examples of failure, then you can convince the people who haven’t completely bought into the belief system.
I honestly don’t see anything wrong with a religion based on environmentalism. What is the problem is that many of the people involved have come up with this childish model of how the world should work. Basically, that environmentalism is a strictly beneficial good whose sole pursuit will better everything else. Lose your job in a polluting industry? A “green” job which is even better will open up for you. We can’t currently see this job because society is blinded by our thuggish, wasteful ways. Wasting your time sorting trash for recycling? Not only are you saving landfill space and the environment, but the activity of sorting trash is healthy and brings you more in tune with Mother Earth. You make something that uses chlorine (remember the Greenpeace obsession with chlorine a while back)? No problem, you can make it without using chlorine and there’ll be no difference in the final item except that it’ll be better for the environment.
In other words, with the hardcore believers every problem or difficulty is dismissed with the belief that somehow the problem is at worst nearly trivial and can be ignored. You can’t reach those who have bought in this deeply, but you can reach everyone else. When the greens are arguing that we need to ban all chlorine from products despite the obvious fact that we need a lot of chlorine containing compounds (like table salt, for example), or claiming flippantly that a better green job will replace the job you just lost to environmentalism, that is, when they’re arguing for actions and policies that have obvious clear and present harm, then they have lost.
Interesting article. That first Crichton quote, was an excellent outsider’s description of environmentalists.
Why does the choice have to be either following the environmentalists or wanting to destroy the world? Can’t one simply not like pollution and not use threats that the world will end in an apocalypse of famine, war, and natural disaster unless the dictates of the eco-elite are followed with out question?
Wodun, it’s because the “environmentalists” have no interest in the environment, only in controlling other people. They can do so by championing a victim (Gaia) who can’t later turn on them.
Having identified the problem, we now need to forthrightly roll back all of the “Green Sharia” that has built up over the past 40 years.