The theology of environmentalism
By Tom Quiner
Michael Crichton wrote a book characterized as “pure porn for global warming deniers.”
His 2004 novel, “State of Fear,” was a techno thriller that exposed the global warming movement as fraudulent and self-serving. In an unusual move for a novel, he included charts and graphs exposing global-warming/client change assertions as pseudo science, at best.
The Wall Street Journal ran a excerpt from a speech the late Mr. Crichton made to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 2003 in which he characterized the movement as a religion. Read this, then run out and buy “State of Fear:”
“Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
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 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. . . .
There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden?”
