The religious mindset embraces the belief that there is more to life than the material world of the senses. There are truths that transcend the here and now. Things that give a non-contingent meaning to human existence. This is obvious with the monotheistic religions, and a little less obvious with Buddhism and polytheistic beliefs. Still, the appeal of this sort of belief in transcendent truths is pretty obvious. That means that not all that many people who reject established religions will move over to some sort of David Hume or Bertrand Russell-type sceptical view that what you see is what you get – we are here because of the fortuitous collisions of trillions of atoms, lots of time and even more luck. As Hume famously said, “the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster”.
That means that myriad people who hold secular views in today’s world are going to invest other things with a sort of enervated, but still transcendent, worth and meaning. It will become a sort of religion for them. And ‘climate change’ is the obvious exhibit number one. All sorts of people talk about this issue through a patently religious-type lens. They invest it with a sort of transcendent value. Mere cost-benefit type analyses are too tawdry and aren’t allowed because this is something beyond the material world of trade-offs and economic thinking. It becomes an explanation for everything, and so cannot be falsified (and really is not a scientific claim at all). Nor does it matter if actions taken in furtherance of this quasi-religious goal will accomplish anything at all, or not. As with the religious martyr, if China and India build a new coal-fired power plant every week (and they are) and the Trump administration pulls out of the Paris Net Zero accord (and it will) – meaning anything an Australia or Britain or Canada might do, including going back to the Stone Age tomorrow, will make virtually zero difference to future temperatures – none of that matters. Moral righteousness irrespective of consequences is what counts and what gives a sort of untainted meaning to life. ‘We will be a moral beacon, whether others copy us or not. We act in the service of a transcendent truth, etcetera, etcetera.’
Readers will think I’m over-egging this and exaggerating the type of thinking that drives many of the climate change cultists. But I don’t think I am. Talk to them of former Obama science advisor Steve Koonin’s book Unsettled, which pokes all sorts of holes in the supposed ‘settled science’ around global warming, and Bjorn Lomborg who argues our money could be infinitely better spent in preparing for a degree or two higher temperatures, and they will dismiss this all out of hand. Point out that extreme weather events have been declining, not accelerating (and the data are clear on this) and they will ignore you, and each time there is a fire or hurricane or flood, for them it will be a sign of the Climate Change God’s displeasure with human actions. No pedestrian human actions or failures will divert them from uttering the all-inclusive explanation that ‘it’s climate change what dunnit’.
Take the massive fires in Los Angeles. All the usual suspects have jumped on the ‘climate change is the culprit’ express. You’ll have heard this from Gavin Newsom, myriad Democrat politicos, Hollywood starlets, the preponderance of the legacy media (seemingly unaware, even after the recent U.S. election, that the vast majority of voters don’t give a flying firetruck what they think or are selling), the Teals in Australia, Bob Carr, the list goes on into the horizon. Now, a non-religious outlook that focused on the empirical facts would point to the lack of water management (no water retention, no dam building, and in fact dams removed so that this past year’s record rainfalls all ended up in the ocean) despite voters passing Proposition 1 to spend $7.5 billion to make it happen. It would suggest that the failure to do proper forest management and burn offs (in deference to the environmental lobby) mattered a lot too. As did the fact many water hydrants were empty of water. As did the $18 million cut in LA fire department’s budget last year, to fund DEI crap. As did DEI hiring practices and promotions in the that same fire department. As did all the homelessness that correlates with more arson. Ditto the illegal immigration gangs – start a fire and then loot when the owners have to leave. And did you know that there was no viable insurance industry for this in LA because the socialist Dems were dictating premiums that the insurance industry knew – given everything else Team Newsom was doing – were insanely too low. So many couldn’t get insurance.
Victor Davis Hanson sums it up quite pithily. These fires were “a total systems collapse”. Not spending on water storage. Suffering from an extensive DEI – so, by definition, no concern with merit in hiring and running the fire department – hierarchy. No forest management. ‘Newsom was fiddling’ while LA burned. It was like a ‘DEI Green New Deal hydrogen bomb’. And this despite huge rainfalls 11 months ago. And warnings from the insurance industry that went unheeded and forced many of these companies to leave. Nope, instead LA cut the fire department budget by almost $18 million last year.
But hey, if you’re a Teal or Bob Carr or one of many, many Democrat politicians this all happened because of ‘climate change’. Sure, I realise that not all exponents of this explanation are true believers. Renewables rent-seekers are grifters. And Gavin Newsom is watching his political future burn up before his eyes and needs to blame something other than Democrat policies. But we all know there are plenty of true believers in this cult. Heck, half the Coalition partyroom probably falls into that category (barf, barf). No amount of empirical explanation will dent the desire for these believers to embrace the gods of climate alarmism. And their need to lay moral blame on all who refuse to genuflect at the altar of this new pseudo-religion.
More has been done to protect and advance free speech since Donald Trump won the election than was seen in all the tenures of all the establishment Anglosphere governments over the last two decades – that is just undeniable. Likewise, the Don’s pending administration will do more to fight back against this climate change religious worldview than any established Anglosphere conservative government has or will do. Because when the costs get too high, businesses flee and everyone else is laughing at you for wearing a hair shirt to get to heaven, the spell can be broken. Los Angeles voters are getting what they voted for – good and hard.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.
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Climate Change – like the fake virus theology – a general category where all sorts of fear mongering and money laundering can take place.
-Arson sets fires to forests in Greece and Canada?
No Climate thingy dun it. Send money or we will all perish in the flames.
-HollyQueered is set on fire due to poor forest management and no water in tanks, reservoirs, hydrants, to put out the fires to save the smelts?
Nope. Climate thingy dun it.
-Hot summer day? Nope, climate boiling.
-Cold summer day? Nope, exactly what our models predicted due to climate boiling.
-Cold winter? Nope, precisely the results of the ‘word-salads-here-effect’, predicted by our models.
-Warm winter? Obviously climate thingy is destroying our winters, snow will be a memory.
Just send money. And let’s destroy our energy, our industry, our infrastructure and our future by building bird choppers and useless solar panel farms – all imported from Chyna.
It is a religious cult of the utmost stupid, depraved and criminal.
Like the Rona Medical Nazism, it is an IQ test.
How we used to laugh at the sandwich man wearing “The end of the world is nigh” boards.
Now the prognosticators have websites.
If only websites were all they had – they have the world’s media, and government psychologists to boot. The irony is there was probably more truth in the “Seven Lustful Proteins” sandwich-board in Oxford Street.
I remember him with his “Protein causes lust” placard, I spoke to him once, nice man. I’ve been eating lots of protein ever since!
Gosh, I remember him, too! I always wondered why he never changed his sandwich-board message, in all the years he was there.
And are in Government voted in by the imbecilic masses, now complaining about electricity prices, Winter fuel allowance and job losses.
This is not incompetence. None of the failings in California are accidental, they are part of a long game, and they are planned. It comes down to a malfeasant desire to destroy society and “prove” there is a climate emergency by creating the very conditions that would cause that emergency. Dr Allen lists how environmentalists have forced bad decisions on infrastructure and forest management, but these environmentalists are easily lead uncritical simpletons who get their ideas from NGOs funded by the likes of Soros, Gates, and the Rockefellers. Cut out those cancers and there might be a change.
The test of that will be what they decide to do in the aftermath. Rebuild the same problem, or redevelop in a more suitable fashion? Maybe the insurance trade will sort that out; we’ll see. In the meantime, the usual suspects will argue that the wildfire outbreaks themselves are man made, not natural events that happen from time to time in our absence.
I suspect most of these fires are arson, but you are right, forest fires occur naturally in the US south west. Some trees depend on them for their seeds to germinate. If the Californians learn anything, it should be not to build houses out of wood and surround them with trees in an area known for forest fires.
But wouldn’t you expect the trees to burn first in a “forest fire”? And yet, see all the homes and vehicles, with even glass windows melted, that firefighters had never seen happen before, and metal running molten, while green leaves were still on the trees…
Directed Energy Weapons Burning Homes to Ash
Net Zero the Religion of Evil
Environmentalism is a religion – non-evidence based beliefs. It is the usual mix of everything Mankind does that is enjoyable is a sin, is prohibited, must be punished and penance done to atone.
Like all religions it is a money-making scam to make its High Priests rich and powerful, with a congregation of weak minded useful idiots many with more money than sense.
Good article on TCW regarding the LA Fires.
“The landscapes tribes in California cultivated were diverse, including foothills, woodlands and forest. Goode describes how, as a result of Indigenous land management, Spaniards were able to travel for over 60 miles under a canopy of mostly water oaks, a shade tree that produces abundant acorns, and how early Euro Americans found wide open pathways into Yosemite.
‘But early European settlers who set foot in California saw tribes setting fire to the land and regarded it as primitive. Strangers to the ecosystem and fire’s role within it, they suppressed the practice. In 1850, California passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which outlawed intentional burning in the newly formed state. One early US forest ranger suggested people who set fire to the land should be shot.’”
You have to give them back their spirit. If that is your focus then you will work out how to do it.
“Why Los Angeles Burned”:
https://www.americaunwon.com/p/why-los-angeles-burned
Attributes fires to mismanagement by State of California administration and any amount of pandering to green crimes against humanity…
…No new reservoir building since 1979
…Removal of existing dams “to improve habitats”
…Water supply cuts to “Save the Delta Smelt”
…Stopping grazing, forest management and controlled burns
…No water in fire hydrants
…Arson by the homeless
…Prioritising DIE, ESG and climate over competency and efficiency
…Collusion between corrupt politicians and at-fault power companies
“These are just a few reasons for the state of the Golden State. There are layers of ineptitude to examine. Years of government mismanagement, money laundering and rejection of pragmatism in favor of ideology worship and anti-humanism.”
Or this:
Directed Energy Weapons Burning Homes to Ash
Everybody is religious. Personally I have not come across anybody who truly believed that his life was not more important than that of an oyster.
But you choose the god you worship.
You could choose Baal or Moloch or Science or Communism or Kim Jong.
But choose carefully…
An excellent article which covers almost everything I would like to say.I just wish your readership were wider so I guess those who can, please publish this very sensible and articulate open discussion on all the platforms you can.
TDS Moderator here: ..hear hear, it’s an excellent article and discussion. Please don’t forget to mention the source of anything you pass on
“Readers will think I’m over-egging this and exaggerating the type of thinking that drives many of the climate change cultists. But I don’t think I am.”
Indeed you are not. And this is demonstrated.
Endorsed by profs Frank Furedi and Judith Curry, my book ‘The Grip of Culture’ provides a formal proof from social data that Climate Catastrophism is a cultural entity, a secular religion, which defies all climate science (see below). Hence supporting with extremely robust data your proposition, which is also made recently here in articles by Lionel Shriver and Chris Morrison.
Likewise for some associated policy points. Catastrophism measurably dominates global public opinion and policy (e.g. commitment to renewables) on climate.
Cultural beliefs bypass rationality, convincing emotively and making believers think they’re on the ‘right side of history’. Hence regarding some of your points above the bizarre and irrational defence, the inverting of facts, and the demonization of critics even if they’re only asking legitimate questions.
For clarity, the book is entirely a work of social psychology. It doesn’t explore any physical climate science. You can’t use physics to identify and measure a secular religion in social data. And as Richard Lindzen noted many years ago, no climate science from the mainstream/ orthodox to the sceptical and everything in-between, supports catastrophism at all. Despite powerful orthodox group-think, this is still true of the IPCC AR5/6 tech chapters.
As an academic book rather than a popular science one, it will not get a wide readership. Nevertheless its proof of catastrophism as a secular religion is absolutely critical, and I’d really appreciate a push to help spread the word, if you would be so kind. It’s not about a wide readership, it’s about the relevant people reading it. And you might reach some of them. Shriver has downloaded the book
If you search for the title and my name, there is an Amazon paperback and also a free PDF download.
Great article!
Andy West, UK.
There is a small cohort of True Believers; a large cohort of brainwashed drones; another large cohort of Grifters whose income relies on promoting and justifying the nonsense (inc most MPs) and a very small number of powerful people/Billionaires who are promoting it …. because it is the means by which they aim to increase their wealth and, probably more important to them, CONTROL the “ants.”
It has nothing whatsoever to do with the climate.
Many cultures have prophets of doom in their histories. Their pitch is “We have greatly sinned, and we need to atone for our sins. We need to repent and do penance by donning on sack cloth and ashes, and live on wild honey and locusts. We need to reject our evil ways of the past. If we don’t, the gods will punish us with floods, droughts, famines and earthquakes” It’s not just in the Bible – many other cultures have had similar prophets. In this secular age, climate activists have taken over as these prophets of doom.
Excellent news that so many Holywood big-mouth celebs have lost millions due to their drivelling support for the useless Greta-worshipping Democrats. Maybe they should have left the US, like they promised they would when the brilliant Trump got elected? Then they could have moved to Britain like the ghastly Ellen Degenerate and had their homes flooded. He–he-he
The Climate change industry is very lucrative for those inside it, benefitting from it.
There is a vaccine for this —-It’s called TRUMP