But for Gore and his ilk, global warming isn’t about scientific fact. It’s about politics, and quasi-religious belief.
“Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists,” Michael Crichton, the physician turned novelist and screenwriter, said in a speech last September.
Environmentalism provides a mirror image of Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths, Crichton said.
“There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s 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 judgment day coming for us all,” he said.
“Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief,” Crichton said. “It’s 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.”
The approximately 3,500 true believers who ventured out in the frigid air to hear the Rev. Al preach the Green Gospel applauded his condemnation of that debbil Bush. But others speculated his speech may have been counter-productive.
“While Mr. Gore may have helped rally the Democratic faithful, the political cast to his speech drew concern that he might be undermining the very cause he said he was addressing,” wrote New York Times reporter Michael Slackman.
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In my case Mr. Crichton was correct. Looking back on my atheism, especially as a kid, environmentalism was my religion. Growing up with the constant brainwashing I got from all my hours watching shows on PBS and the doom and gloom environment reinforced at the public school it is no surprise. Of course during that time we were taught our actions were causing global cooling. We had a neighborhood club of environmentalist kids embarrassingly called the Pixies. We constantly talked about what could be done to save the earth. We even set fines for any member of the club caught littering. This is rather sad that as children instead of playing we were involved in the slow death cult of radical environmentalism. People who used dyed toilet paper and products containing phosphates were condemned by us as heretics. Using DDT was a mortal sin and having one child was acceptable even thought that also took up valuable resources better used by bugs and animals.
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“We even set fines for any member of the club caught littering.”
You poor kids! You shoulda’ come to my house. We could’ve played army men and blown things up. Especially when you take a model airplane, fill it with glue, tie a string to the wing, set the glue on fire and start flying it in circles! Definitely no global cooling, esp. when the bottle rocket artillery starts up.
Jeff, I’m so glad you said something about that “global cooling” thing. I had a quite acrimonious discussion with a woman on a homeschooling loop one time about the whole environmental religion thing.
I mentioned in passing that it would help if the environmentalists could get their stories straight about whether we were going to get warmer or cooler–that as highschoolers we were told to prepare for severe cooling–leading to disruption of food supplies, etc, because the wheat fields would be pretty much unusable.
She was my age, but denied ever hearing any such thngs.
It wasn’t worth doing the research to rebut her at the time, but it was refreshing to see someone else remembered it!