The Burlington Free Press observed that Peter Shumlin, Vermont’s new leader in the State Senate, sounds "more like a preacher" when he talks about global warming. Indeed, after hearing Jim Douglas’ inaugural address to the legislature, Shumlin exclaimed, "it sounded like he's adopted our religion (italics added). Let's hope he comes to services."

Those services began this week as the State House transformed itself for a few hours into a temple. The prayer bells rang, and legislators abandoned their committee work, as they will do so six times in the coming weeks, to congregate in the chamber and be sermonized to by "experts" -- the high priests of the Church of Global Climate Change. According to press reports, Senator Jim Condos emerged from the first mass proclaiming he’d "got religion," too.

My first question is, if Global Warming is the religion its proponents declare it to be, when does the Constitutional separation of church and state kick in? Certainly we can’t have tax dollars going to support religious institutions and teachings, so can we please get back to work on fixing Vermont’s tax crisis?

My second question is if Global Warming is, in practice, going to be the State Religion of Vermont, what kind of church is it we’re getting into? The good, nurturing kind that is inclusive, forgiving and open as it seeks to elevate humanity? Or, the scary as hell kind that plays on people’s fears and guilt, demands conformity and masochistic sacrifice from its members, and brutally punishes "heretics" in a quest to justify the fact that all it’s really doing is amassing riches and power for the holy hierarchy and its toadies. 

So far, fear and guilt seem to be a big part of Shumlin’s teachings. Editorial pages and press releases have been prophesizing coming plagues on our foliage season, maple syrup, and ski industries if we don’t see the light and mend our blasphemous ways. If we really drop the ball, well, what religion is complete without a good end-of-the-world scenario in which an Old Testament flood wipes the earth clean as the polar ice cap melts? 

As someone who lives in a ski town, I am acutely sensitive to the need for snow, and the impact warmer and warmer winters can have on people’s lives. But, if we’re already beyond the point where good skiing conditions are a reliable certainty and the maple trees are already acting loopy, doesn’t that mean in order to save these industries we would have to actually reverse the global warming trend – starting, like, today. And is any scientist who says global warming is a fact also saying that reversing it, under any scenario, is even a remote possibility? 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts an average global rise in temperature of 1.4°C to 5.8 °C between 1990 and 2100. "Estimates indicate that even if successfully and completely implemented, the Kyoto Protocol will reduce that increase by somewhere between 0.02 °C and 0.28 °C by the year 2050." (source: Nature, October 2003). So, if this is the best we can do (and we can’t even do it), how is a Vermont law banning idling your car for more than thirty seconds going to save syrup, foliage and skiing? It’s not. And it’s not fair, decent, or honest to lead Vermonters on with the false promise that anything this legislature does, or can lead others to do, stands a snowball’s chance in the year 2100 of helping save their businesses.

Vermonters are already leaders in the world when it comes to environmental stewardship. We are almost universally willing to make sacrifices to protect our environment – keeping it clean, treating it with respect, protecting it for the next generation. There are surely more and better ways we can go about doing this. But, if someone is dictating to me that I have to get into a matchbox sized car with my two freezing cold kids on a twenty below zero morning after a mere thirty seconds of idling to warm up, I’m sorry, but I need a really compelling reason, and I’ll need to see results.

In the book 1491, Charles Mann describes a climate change crisis that affected the Mayans. They were suffering from Global Drying (my term), a prolonged drought that was, at the time, believed to have manmade origins – bad behavior was annoying the gods. In order to reverse the trend, the spiritual leaders would drive a knitting needle through their tongues, then "floss" the wound with a knotted leather string. The resulting hemorrhage of blood would soak into the earth, revitalize it, and hopefully please the gods enough to let it rain. 

This may sound utterly stupid and self-destructive in this day and age, but it should serve as a reminder that people have often throughout history done stupid, pointless, often very harmful things as an expression of piety. This is why how we choose to deal with Global Warming should not be religious in nature, as it appears to be in Vermont at present, but rational and goal oriented. And, it’s why this legislature’s approach to the issue is so frightening. 

Are "preachers" like Shumlin capable of making rational decisions about reducing greenhouse gas emissions? (For example, allowing St. Albans to finally put in the Wal Mart they want, thus eliminating thousands of unnecessary car trips every year between Franklin County and Williston, and harvesting our forests to ensure maximum carbon reduction instead of designating them as less efficient "wilderness.") Or can we expect a more ceremonial, exhibitionist, and masochistically painful approach to environmental protection, uselessly slicing open our wallets, if not our tongues? 

-- Rob Roper is State Director for FreedomWorks-Vermont