Environmentalism as Fundamentalism

[Valin]

The American Thinker:

Dan Dagget

12/27/13

 

Most environmentalists I know consider themselves non-religious, even anti-religious. A few subscribe to "new" religious denominations such as Unitarianism, which I have heard described as "church for atheists with children." None, as far as I know, would take kindly to being described as practitioners of fundamentalist, Bible-thumping, "ol' time religion".

 

The irony, here, is that contemporary environmentalism and fundamentalist religion have so much in common.

 

Take the most basic assumption of contemporary environmentalist doctrine. Individual environmentalists and environmental organizations, alike hold that the one and only way to solve the problems they address is to "protect" the environment. Who they would protect it from, of course, is us, based on the further assumption that everything that goes wrong with the environment -- desertification, species extinction, invasion by non-native plants, etc. -- is the result of human misuse or overuse or just plain use of "nature" or the ecosystem, or whatever you choose to call our surroundings.

 

This assumption has become so all-encompassing that we now even blame ourselves for occurrences we used to call "natural" disasters.. Hurricanes are our fault (a result of Global Warming). Weather too hot -- our fault. Too cold -- ditto. There are even plenty of people who say earthquakes and tsunamis are our fault; also caused somehow by Climate Change.

 

(Snip)