Science or Religion? 
By Robert Maynard 

In this week’s "Elsewhere" section there is an Editorial by The Washington Times that weighs in on the latest revelations regarding "The Global Cooling Cover-up", better known as "Climategate". The editorial raises an important issue: "Anyone interested in accurate science should be appalled at the manipulation of data 'to hide the decline [in temperature]' and deletion of e-mail exchanges and data so as not to reveal information that would support global-warming skeptics." This is a take on the issue that has not been commented on to the extent that it should be. The threat to the credibility of science has been present within the environmentalist movement long before this latest fraud. That threat comes from using science as a thinly disguised cover for what appears to be a nature worship religion.

In a January 16th 2007 article by previous True North Editor and Vermont GOP Chairman Rob Roper entitled "Shaman" Shumlin?  Is Vermont becoming an environmental theocracy?" a case is made in a humorous fashion that the Environmental movement is a kind of religion attempting to impose its own version of Theocracy. In the article, Mr. Roper notes that even the Burlington Free Press mentions that Vermont’s new leader in the State Senate sounds "more like a preacher" when he talks about global warming.

In some instances, the similarity between environmentalist beliefs and religion is more than a mere analogy. In a November 3 article of this year entitled "Climate change belief given same legal status as religion" the Telegraph UK reports that: "An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs." The ruling specifically stated that "a belief in man-made climate change ... is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations".

If environmentalism in general, and the belief in global warming in particular, is to be awarded the status of a religion, should we not enquire about the nature of the religion that is being used to control a large portion of the global economy? Let’s start this inquiry by examining some quotes from leading environmentalists:

"If you ask me, it'd be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other."

 -- Amory Lovins, The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22

"Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun."

-- Paul Ehrlich, "An Ecologist's Perspective on Nuclear Power", May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report

"We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the same industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are."

 -- Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton University. He joined the Princeton faculty after more than two decades with Environmental Defense, is a long-time participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), serving most recently as a lead author of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.

"We've already had too much economic growth in the US. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure."

-- Ehrlich again.

"The planet is about to break out with fever, indeed it may already have, and we [human beings] are the disease. We should be at war with ourselves and our lifestyles."

 -- Thomas Lovejoy, assistant secretary to the Smithsonian Institution.

"The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world."

-- John Shuttleworth, FoE manual writer.

"People are the cause of all the problems; we have too many of them; we need to get rid of some of them, and this (ban of DDT) is as good a way as any."

 Charles Wurster, Environmental Defense Fund.

"We can and should seize upon the energy crisis as a good excuse and great opportunity for making some very fundamental changes that we should be making anyhow for other reasons."

-- Russell Train (EPA Administrator at the time, and soon thereafter became head of the World Wildlife Fund),Science 184 p. 1050, 7 June 1974

"The world has a cancer, and that cancer is man."

 -- Alan Gregg, former longtime official of the Rockerfeller Foundation

"Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape."

 -- John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club

"Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental."

-- Dave Forman, Earth First! and Sierra Club director (1995-1997)

"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs."

 -- John Davis, editor of Earth First! journal

What we have here is a radical religious view that worships the earth and sees human action as evil. Respecting the earth in the fashion of a responsible steward of God’s gift is a good thing, but worshipping the earth to the point of demonizing human beings is downright dangerous. If the environmentalist movement is to have any credibility, it must disown this anti-human segment within it. Until it does, it discredits science by hiding behind it.

Robert Maynard is the Editor of the True North website