Both Instapundit and National Review point today to a column in the Times of London—a column by Antonia Senior that identifies the religious character of environmentalism.
True enough, but Senior’s analysis is a little odd, and it is proof, in its way, of how little religious thinking is actually present in England. To get to the religious character of environmentalism, you see, Senior has to run it through communism: Greens now are like the Reds used to be. They think the future is too important to allow decisions to be left in the hands of ordinary citizens. They know themselves to be right, while all others are wrong. They treat as a kind of Trotskyite betrayal the claim, for instance, that nuclear power is environmentally superior to solar and wind power (a good image, that, isn’t it?). They want to change human nature.
They are true believers, in other words, just like the spy Anthony Blunt was a true believer in communism, and that makes them religious, because communism was a kind of religion.
There are ways in which all of this is accurate, of course, but communism was a religion by analogy: an ersatz religion, straining but unable to fulfill the human desire for the divine. With environmentalism as communism as religion, what Senior gives us is an analogy to what was already an analogy.
Much cleaner would be the one-step analogy, going straight to the source. We need a good essay on how the narrative of environmentalism is the narrative of Christianity, although without Christ. An original innocence in a Garden of Eden? Check. The ruination of that paradise by human action? Check. A sinful human nature? A demand to change your life? A looming apocalypse? Check. Check. Check. A redemption?
Well, no, not that: There is no Christ in environmentalism. The heavenly paradise at the green end, like edenic paradise at the green beginning, can have no humans in it. But there’s a reason that environmentalism has clicked with so many. They don’t believe in Christ, but they still feel the Christian narrative of human history, and environmentalism is a moral tale that fits both those facts.
July 25th, 2009 | 1:25 pm
Jody: Sure there’s a redemption: The human race will be redeemed by our sacrificing our own wellbeing to save the planet. As a consequence, there will be a (corporeal) New Jerusalem that returns us to the Edenic state we were evolved out of and to which we will have returned.
July 25th, 2009 | 4:41 pm
Mr. Bottum’s post is unfair and unhelpful. He is free to define words however he likes and use them as such in private, but it is an abuse of our common language to equate “environmentalism” with “misanthropic nature worship.” Many people have a particular dedication to preserving the earth, usually both because they believe it has intrinsic value (though the majority think man is ultimately more valuable) and because they believe this is ultimately in the best interests of humanity. They tend to think that ignorance and sloth prevent many people from doing what is right and proportionate to preserve the earth–an impression that any Augustinian of mankind should find antecedently plausible. These people are commonly called environmentalists. To make all of them out to be enemies of the human race (if you will forgive a cheap allusion) is wantonly partisan.
July 25th, 2009 | 6:03 pm
Stan Beardley: Except, that is precisely the direction in which environmentalism seems to be going. Deep ecology wants the human population under 1 billion; Al Gore global warming hysteria and his preaching of the fight ‘to save the planet” as a way to find personal transcendent meaning; “rights of nature” equivalent to those of humans placed in the Ecuador Constitution at the behest of US radical environmentalists; violence in the name of saving the planet; high environmental advisers in the UK pushing radical population control measures, again to “save the planet”; humans depicted as the AIDS on Gaia, etc., etc. etc. You don’t own the definition of environmentalism and if supporters of conservation and proper environmentalism aren’t careful, the approach you discussed will be subsumed by the misanthropes that very energetically this way come. That was Bottum’s subject.
July 26th, 2009 | 7:40 am
I believe it was Chesterton who said that if good religion is abandoned it will inevitably be replaced by bad religion.
The environmentalists are surely one instance. I would say the Obamanists are another. The messiah has been elected.
Having said that, let us acknowledge that the exhortation, or commandment, in the beginning, to increase and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it [exercise dominion over it] implies stewardship over the environment. With proper prudence though, for we also have the command not to make strange gods. Positing that we must reduce our numbers by several hundred percent, or that nature is “equal” to humans in public policy, goes too far.
July 26th, 2009 | 9:28 am
Wesley J Smith,
But then is it helpful to simply set ourselves up in utter opposition to them? Or would it not be better to point out the importance of taking care of the environment, of good stewardship over the planet, while also critiquing where they went wrong? Substantively, it seems an important point, precisely because the current first-world lifestyle is unsustainable, both in the long run and the world over. If you want to argue that overpopulation is a myth (and I believe that is a good argument) you still have to acknowledge that if the entire population of the world, now, consumed the way we do in America, then we’d have no resources left in short order. Practically, it is important, too, because people in the middle know, intuitively, that something is wrong with our materialistic/consumption-oriented ways and their effect on our larger environment. So if they look at two sides, one acknowledging that reality and the other not, they are likely to choose the one who does, regardless of how radical. Failure to acknowledge the import of caring for the environment will do nothing but create more of the misanthrope extremists you believe yourself to be fighting.
Finally, in an entirely different tenor, isn’t it true that ever political and ideological movement has extremists or a fringe element that, if the movement as a whole was judged on that basis, would tend to discredit it? Didn’t the pro-life movement just get done asking the world not to judge it for the kinds of people who kill abortionists? How is this fringe element in environmentalism any worse? And how is their connection to more mainstream environmentalism any less tenuous?
July 26th, 2009 | 11:51 am
[...] the context of green religion, the jet-setting global-warmists are like the popular image of wealthy Renaissance bishops and [...]
July 26th, 2009 | 9:49 pm
Another way to look at the “religiosity” of the environmental, or “green,” movement is that it requires faith and belief without empirical evidence.
There is also a “hierarchy” within the movement with its bishops (the scientists), its priests (the politicians), and the laity (the taxpayers) who put the money in the plate every week via their paycheck witholdings. Do I need to say who the Holy Father may be? Amen
July 26th, 2009 | 9:53 pm
Chris: Indeed. Proper policies should be supported. Toward that end, I think it is crucial that environmentalists of the proper school–as I see it–not let the misanthropes take over the movement. I also think these policies should take into account the human impact on what is being proposed. It is a dynamic tension, sometimes a bitter one, and that’s okay. The problem is: I think the more radical want to cut that cord and forget the human in the quasi religious devotion to saving the planet.
July 27th, 2009 | 9:39 am
[...] the rubric of Christian stewardship. I’m not knocking that (not too far, anyway), either, Jody’s reservations notwithstanding, being about to get up from this desk to get to work with those very cleaning agents. I’m [...]
August 31st, 2009 | 10:42 am
How should Christians respond to today’s environmentalism?
From Mathew 22 ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.
I see to many environmentalists continuing to use the technology that they are forbidding others to use. Are they doing unto others as they are doing themselves?
The unenlightened have worshiped the earth, sun, moon, and stars for centuries at the expense of other human beings. Much of the current environmentalism should be seen for what it is. It is another “golden calf” upon which the high priests of its movement (Al Gore) enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. Using selective statistics and “junk science” the high priests of this “false god” continue to live in luxury while the poor lose jobs and die in poverty without the insecticides and minerals that might enrich or save their lives. Like the “high priest” of false gods before them the humans they control must be sacrificed upon the “golden calf” so that the “progressive few” can control the so-called unenlightened masses. As at Mt. Sinai the masses pray to the “environmental god” while Moses nearby holds in his hands the true word of God. Look at the Pharisees of 2009. Follow the money. Who is benefiting for their environmental worship? Is it the earth or they? Is it the masses created in God’s image or the false prophets of environmentalism that benefit? As at Mr. Sinai the “golden calf” is attractive. The emotional attachment is strong. It seems that everyone is worshiping. It is painful to search for the truth. The truth will set you free, but as Jesus showed us searching for the truth can be very costly.
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