The sickening stench of a climate based religion
Monday, December 7th, 2009 | Religion & Politics, Thoughts
I love the environment. I love the planet. I think we need to take action in order to prevent human caused climate change.
But like so many of the causes I support, I hate the people who also support it.
Of course, I don’t actually hate them. I just said that for dramatic effect. I suspect they hate me and I’ll come on to that later. It’s more that they irritate me. Much in the same way as religion they arrogant self righteous actually cause more harm than good and I feel a need to stand up against this.
So, I guess we should start at the beginning.
Global warming, human caused climate change is happening. I should say it’s almost certainly happening to be more accurate, there is always that .1% chance it isn’t, but to the best of our knowledge it is happening, it is having an adverse affect on the planet we’re living on and as we are planning to continue to live her for quite a while we should really do something about it.
But the current climate change movement isn’t helping matters. Indeed they’ve become so dug in to their beliefs that it has almost become a religion. Indeed, it has become a religion – earlier this year a belief in climate change was held up to be in need of the same protection as those afforded to religious beliefs. Of course the fact that these beliefs need such protection is the giveaway.
Much like religious stories, the ideas of the climate change movement are just so crazy and far out there it’s almost “too unbelievable to make up.” Take a minute to consider them. The planet, the whole planet, and the very future of the entire human race is at stake. It’a future rests on you. You can save it – if only you would switch off that light bulb that draws only a 1/200th of the power your kettle draws in that room you are not using.
But it’s gets far, far worse. From this very dubious idea we have an entire world view building up around it which mirrors religion – and in particular Catholicism far closer than anything ever should to the point where you would expect a scandal a decade down the line involving small children and sexual acts which should never have taken place.
It’s the concept of original sin. The idea that you’re born into the bonds of inequity as St Paul put it. That you have some kind of penance to pay to a greater body which you will always be trapped in.
Think about it. You’re a new born baby brought into the world. Into a hospital surrounded by bright lights, of intensive electrical equipment in a city so full of light pollution you can’t even see the stars. You’re already a sinner – using up energy! Do you need that incubuator? Won’t a blanket do?
We live our lives every day using up power, turning lights on, running our computers and it’s all just climate change sin. You can’t escape it – you can’t not use electricity. Or gass. Or paper which is still bad even though it’s a renewal energy source. You’re sinning every minute of every day of your life.
You might think you lead a good life. You’re trying your best – you turn lights off in rooms you’re not using, you turn your TV off rather than putting it on stand by. But honestly, have you recycled everything? Have you scraped the cheese off that pizza box so you could recycle the cardboard? Have you turned the computer off the minute you finished using it? Left a charger plugged even after your phone was fully charged? Have you even just thought about it in your head?
Of course you have. So I have I. Right now I’m running my laptop and my desktop and only using my desktop because I’m going to use my laptop again soon. I also have a light on in my kitchen so I can see where I am going when I go in there to take my dinner out of the oven. And where, where is the global warming jesus character to take this climate sin away from us?
We need to pay penance for our sin, sin which we generate every day by just trying to live our lives because quite frankly the modern world just isn’t stressful enough.
For the love of the god I do not believe in, it’s 2009, the UK is a 1st world country, we shouldn’t be in this situation.
I was at a York Brights meeting last month and there was a discussion going about the real way in which people could control their footprint – by not having another child.
And they’re right. Having a child has a huge environmental impact. Every new human does. It’s probably the number one thing we could do to stem climate change, just stop having kids.
Of course, this is just stupid. I don’t even need to make a reductio ad absurdum argument, because we’re already here. We shouldn’t have to prevent ourselves from having children if we want them, we should be able to leave our computers on all day if we want to, we should be able to light our homes without feeling guilty about it.
What we need of course, is a serious approach to climate change.
Stemming climate change isn’t going to come from stumbling around in the dark or using paper bags even though the productuion methods use almost as much natural resources as just making plastic ones.
It’s going to come from technology and innovation. From human creatively, from pushing back the boundaries of science and engineering, from creating new ways to generate the energy our society needs which don’t damage the world around us. Remember all that stuff? Or are we so dead inside that we have forgotten we are the same people that put man on the moon, split the atom or transformed Planet Earth with civilizations and cultures more advanced than anything we know of?
But it’s blasphemy to say this. It probably offends people’s beliefs for me to express these opinions. Like the religious fundamentalist the idea that I might take a position based on reason and evidence rather than their carefully constructed dogma threatens their fragile world view which can so easily be blown away by the winds of logic.
Well it’s about time people stood up and called them on it. There are ways we can solve these problems – amazing ways. Look at nuclear fusion (not to be confused of course with nuclear technology at the moment which operates on nuclear fission). Here we have the potential to unlock virtually limitless supplies of energy without harming the environment. Why, why are we not literally pouring money into such research?
We should be, we need to be – for our own sake, as well as the planet’s.
I love the environment. I love the planet. I think we need to take action in order to prevent human caused climate change.
But like so many of the causes I support, I hate the people who also support it.
Of course, I don’t actually hate them. I just said that for dramatic effect. I suspect they hate me and I’ll come on to that later. It’s more that they irritate me. Much in the same way as religion they arrogant self righteous actually cause more harm than good and I feel a need to stand up against this.
So, I guess we should start at the beginning.
Global warming, human caused climate change is happening. I should say it’s almost certainly happening to be more accurate, there is always that .1% chance it isn’t, but to the best of our knowledge it is happening, it is having an adverse affect on the planet we’re living on and as we are planning to continue to live her for quite a while we should really do something about it.
But the current climate change movement isn’t helping matters. Indeed they’ve become so dug in to their beliefs that it has almost become a religion. Indeed, it has become a religion – earlier this year a belief in climate change was held up to be in need of the same protection as those afforded to religious beliefs. Of course the fact that these beliefs need such protection is the giveaway.
Much like religious stories, the ideas of the climate change movement are just so crazy and far out there it’s almost “too unbelievable to make up.” Take a minute to consider them. The planet, the whole planet, and the very future of the entire human race is at stake. It’a future rests on you. You can save it – if only you would switch off that light bulb that draws only a 1/200th of the power your kettle draws in that room you are not using.
But it’s gets far, far worse. From this very dubious idea we have an entire world view building up around it which mirrors religion – and in particular Catholicism far closer than anything ever should to the point where you would expect a scandal a decade down the line involving small children and sexual acts which should never have taken place.
It’s the concept of original sin. The idea that you’re born into the bonds of inequity as St Paul put it. That you have some kind of penance to pay to a greater body which you will always be trapped in.
Think about it. You’re a new born baby brought into the world. Into a hospital surrounded by bright lights, of intensive electrical equipment in a city so full of light pollution you can’t even see the stars. You’re already a sinner – using up energy! Do you need that incubuator? Won’t a blanket do?
We live our lives every day using up power, turning lights on, running our computers and it’s all just climate change sin. You can’t escape it – you can’t not use electricity. Or gass. Or paper which is still bad even though it’s a renewal energy source. You’re sinning every minute of every day of your life.
You might think you lead a good life. You’re trying your best – you turn lights off in rooms you’re not using, you turn your TV off rather than putting it on stand by. But honestly, have you recycled everything? Have you scraped the cheese off that pizza box so you could recycle the cardboard? Have you turned the computer off the minute you finished using it? Left a charger plugged even after your phone was fully charged? Have you even just thought about it in your head?
Of course you have. So I have I. Right now I’m running my laptop and my desktop and only using my desktop because I’m going to use my laptop again soon. I also have a light on in my kitchen so I can see where I am going when I go in there to take my dinner out of the oven. And where, where is the global warming jesus character to take this climate sin away from us?
We need to pay penance for our sin, sin which we generate every day by just trying to live our lives because quite frankly the modern world just isn’t stressful enough.
For the love of the god I do not believe in, it’s 2009, the UK is a 1st world country, we shouldn’t be in this situation.
I was at a York Brights meeting last month and there was a discussion going about the real way in which people could control their footprint – by not having another child.
And they’re right. Having a child has a huge environmental impact. Every new human does. It’s probably the number one thing we could do to stem climate change, just stop having kids.
Of course, this is just stupid. I don’t even need to make a reductio ad absurdum argument, because we’re already here. We shouldn’t have to prevent ourselves from having children if we want them, we should be able to leave our computers on all day if we want to, we should be able to light our homes without feeling guilty about it.
What we need of course, is a serious approach to climate change.
Stemming climate change isn’t going to come from stumbling around in the dark or using paper bags even though the productuion methods use almost as much natural resources as just making plastic ones.
It’s going to come from technology and innovation. From human creatively, from pushing back the boundaries of science and engineering, from creating new ways to generate the energy our society needs which don’t damage the world around us. Remember all that stuff? Or are we so dead inside that we have forgotten we are the same people that put man on the moon, split the atom or transformed Planet Earth with civilizations and cultures more advanced than anything we know of?
But it’s blasphemy to say this. It probably offends people’s beliefs for me to express these opinions. Like the religious fundamentalist the idea that I might take a position based on reason and evidence rather than their carefully constructed dogma threatens their fragile world view which can so easily be blown away by the winds of logic.
Well it’s about time people stood up and called them on it. There are ways we can solve these problems – amazing ways. Look at nuclear fusion (not to be confused of course with nuclear technology at the moment which operates on nuclear fission). Here we have the potential to unlock virtually limitless supplies of energy without harming the environment. Why, why are we not literally pouring money into such research?
We should be, we need to be – for our own sake, as well as the planet’s.