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The issue of climate change and religion is suddenly getting more attention. In the June 12 issue of the New York Review of Books, physicist Freeman Dyson reviews a couple of new books, including economist William Nordhaus’s A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies.
All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world….Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.
In a recent column in the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer says something similar, referring to the “Church of the Environment” and asserting that “Environmentalists are Gaia’s priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect.” And Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic and author of the new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, draws parallels between environmentalism, religion, and communism. Environmentalists are the heirs to Marxism, he says. “I understand that global warming is a religion conceived to suppress human freedom.” (The Washington Times, May 30, 2008.) Robert Nelson, a professor of environmental economics at the University of Maryland, has written extensively on environmentalism and religion. At AIER’s 2007 conference on Global Warming, he gave a talk on “Theological Aspects of Environmental Economics” (Audio, Video). Nelson’s related essay, “Global Warming and Religion: Climate Policy as Applied Theology” is included in The Global Warming Debate: Science, Economics, and Policy, our newly published volume of articles from that conference (182 pages, $15, available in our bookstore).
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