Environmentalism, apocalypse and pseudo-religion

Another excellent article today by J.R. Dunn at American Thinker.

That environmentalism is in fact a pseudo-religion goes without saying. Like all such, it possesses every element of contemporary legitimate belief. It has a deity, in this case the goddess Gaia, the personification of the living Earth, (first envisioned by James Lovelock, whom we can slot in as high priest). It has its holy books, most changing with the seasons, and most, as is true of the Bible with many convinced Christians, utterly unread. It has its saints, its prophets, its commandments, religious rituals (be sure to recycle that bottle), a large gallery of sins, mortal and otherwise, and an even larger horde of devils. (Let me pause here to sharpen a horn.)

Another item that a pseudo-religion must have is an apocalypse - and that's what global warming is all about.

In fact, the apocalyptic is the major fulcrum of environmentalism, the axis around which everything else turns. It's environmentalism's major element of concern, its chief attraction, and the center of discussion and speculation, in much the same way that some Protestant variants of Christianity are obsessed above all with sin. So crucial is the apocalypse to environmentalism that there has been a whole string of them, one after the other, covering every last aspect of the natural world. If one don't git ya, the next one will.

Green emphasis on the apocalyptic appeared early, accompanying the introduction of mass environmental awareness itself. Silent Spring, published in 1962, represents the first environmentalist scripture -- nothing other than a modern book of Revelations.

Read all of A Necessary Apocalypse.

h/t: Dr. Sanity, who adds:

This is an excellent article that reviews the predictions of the priests of the environmental movement since the first of holy environmental scriptures was written (Carson's Silent Spring). In short, this pseudoreligion has been predicting imminent doom and global catastrophe for half a century.

Before the most recent global warming industry was popular, there were the imminent global catastrophes of pollution, overpopulation, universal famine, nuclear winter, and ozone depletion and just a short decade or so ago there was the global cooling scare. None of the predicted environmental catastrophes arrived on schedule.

Dunn notes that "global warming has actually adapted elements of all previous environmental crazes" and that the warnings have escalated beyond all reason. The recent release of the UN's report gives us only 10 years to prevent the environmental apocalype, but it will continue for centuries, and we are told that the "debate is over."