Fundamentalist Fanatics of the Green Religion

Climate religion has its fair share of fanatic devotees:

Human beings are inescapably religious, and if they will not worship the one true God, they will always find someone or something else to devote themselves to. As G. K. Chesterton is purported to have said, “When a man ceases to believe in God, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in anything.”

The Green Religion is now the reigning belief system of so many in the West, including gullible young people who have been force-fed gloom and doomism for decades now. As has been pointed out, it has become the third great redemptive movement in history. As American sociologist Robert Nisbet put it some 40 years ago:

Environmentalism is now well on its way to becoming the third great wave of redemptive struggle in Western history, the first being Christianity, the second modern socialism. In its way, the dream of a perfect physical environment has all the revolutionary potential that lay both in the Christian vision of mankind redeemed by Christ and in the socialist, chiefly Marxian, prophecy of mankind freed from social injustice.

And there is all the fanaticism and ferocity to be found with these folks as with anyone in other more traditional religions. They really hate it when you dare to differ with them, and many of them seem quite ready to have us recalcitrants burnt at the stake if they could get away with it.

Because I often write on these matters, and because over 100,000 comments have come into this site, I do know firsthand about the rage and religious zeal these folks can have as they pour bile and contempt on anyone who actually thinks the sky is not falling. And that wrath can fall on sensible environmentalists such as Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, and Bjorn Lomborg from Denmark.

I have discussed them elsewhere, for example here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/02/19/a-review-of-confessions-of-a-greenpeace-dropout-by-patrick-moore/

But whenever I dare to assure folks that the world will not end yesterday due to whatever the latest pet scare is being peddled, I get so many angry and ornery trolls flooding my pages. Of course most of their remarks I cannot print as they are just too toxic and full of filth. Haters are gonna hate.

And those comments that are printable are often so bizarre and irrational that they are seldom worth featuring on my site. Just one example can be mentioned here: “Greta is wise beyond her years and widely respected. No one has ever heard of the blonde bimbo. Anyone still in denial about the climate crises is mentally deranged.” Hmm, so this kid who finally managed to finish high school a few months ago is intellectually superior to Eva with several law degrees with honours. Makes sense.

And notice the typical tactic of the trolls: just throw mud around and use plenty of ad hominems. Anyone who questions the climate cult is “mentally deranged.” So was Moore mentally deranged when he set up Greenpeace – or only afterwards?

Oh, and it’s interesting how many of these hate-filled trolls denounce me and claim I cannot and should not be listened to because I am an “old man”. Hmm, Albert Einstein was no spring chicken when he did so much of his great work – should we have ignored him as well simply because he was an elderly male?

Richard Dawkins is 82 (and male, last time I checked), so these trolls will just ignore him – right?! The consistent false prophet and alarmist Paul Ehrlich is another. Remember him? Back in 1968 he told us that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over” and millions of Americans would die of starvation. Well, he is 91. Another old guy to just ignore then?

Then we have folks like Al Gore who is 75. Back in 2009 he told us that the Arctic would be snow- and ice-free in the summer of 2013 because of man-made global warming. Should we believe him now, or just back then? I am getting confused here.

But calling people names instead of dealing with the actual evidence is par for the course for the green religionists. And so many of them are school kids who have been flooded with non-stop indoctrination about the end of the world as we know it. Thus we have had yet another student march for the planet taking place a few days ago in Australian capital cities.

I have to concur with Rita Panahi on this: “Whether it’s protesting climate change or raging against the only democracy in the Middle East, no responsible adult should want children skipping school to become the useful idiots of political activists.”

Yes, they have been well-trained by their adult minders who want all young people to forget about the 3 Rs and instead become full-time political activists to support the latest cause and craze. Of course many have legitimate concerns about the well-being of the planet we live on. That is fine, and I have often spoken about the sorts of roles we can play here to be good stewards of planet earth.

But so much of what is being pushed is political ideology instead of solid science. And making constant false prophecies about what is to happen (as I mentioned above) helps no one. Just as the Covid scares worked a treat for governments to grab yet more power and control over the masses, too much of the climate alarmism is seeking to do the very same thing.

A few years ago I reported on what one environmentalist said about the current state of play. Part of that is worth sharing here again:

Here are some facts few people know: Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”;

The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”;

Climate change is not making natural disasters worse;

Fires have declined 25 per cent around the world since 2003;

The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska;

The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California;

Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany and France since the mid-1970s;

The Netherlands became rich, not poor, while adapting to life below sea level;

We produce 25 per cent more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter;

Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change;

Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels;

Preventing future pandemics requires more, not less, “industrial” agriculture.

I know the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism. In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those ­conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, the Inter­national Union for the Conservation of Nature and other leading scientific bodies. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2020/07/01/deconstructing-climate-alarmism/

There are indeed areas of environmental concern, but often they are NOT what we hear zealous students and political activists telling us. But whenever we set up a new – and false – religion, we will always see plenty of hype, fear-mongering, and true-believers running with whatever they are told to run with, while cursing any nay-sayers they meet. That can be a dangerous place to be in.

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