Environmentalism as Religion

The New Atlantis: Environmentalism as Religion

Traditional religion is having a tough time in parts of the world. Majorities in most European countries have told Gallup pollsters in the last few years that religion does not “occupy an important place” in their lives. Across Europe, Judeo-Christian church attendance is down, as is adherence to religious prohibitions such as those against out-of-wedlock births. And while Americans remain, on average, much more devout than Europeans, there are demographic and regional pockets in this country that resemble Europe in their religious beliefs and practices.

The rejection of traditional religion in these quarters has created a vacuum unlikely to go unfilled; human nature seems to demand a search for order and meaning, and nowadays there is no shortage of options on the menu of belief. Some searchers syncretize Judeo-Christian theology with Eastern or New Age spiritualism. Others seek through science the ultimate answers of our origins, or dream of high-tech transcendence by merging with machines — either approach depending not on rationalism alone but on a faith in the goodness of what rationalism can offer.

For some individuals and societies, the role of religion seems increasingly to be filled by environmentalism. It has become “the religion of choice for urban atheists,” according to Michael Crichton, the late science fiction writer (and climate change skeptic). In a widely quoted 2003 speech, Crichton outlined the ways that environmentalism “remaps” Judeo-Christian beliefs:

There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

In parts of northern Europe, this new faith is now the mainstream. “Denmark and Sweden float along like small, content, durable dinghies of secular life, where most people are nonreligious and don’t worship Jesus or Vishnu, don’t revere sacred texts, don’t pray, and don’t give much credence to the essential dogmas of the world’s great faiths,” observes Phil Zuckerman in his 2008 book Society without God. Instead, he writes, these places have become “clean and green.” This new faith has very concrete policy implications; the countries where it has the most purchase tend also to have instituted policies that climate activists endorse. To better understand the future of climate policy, we must understand where “ecotheology” has come from and where it is likely to lead. …

A couple more interesting excerpts:

… Describing environmentalism as a religion is not equivalent to saying that global warming is not real. Indeed, the evidence for it is overwhelming, and there are powerful reasons to believe that humans are causing it. But no matter its empirical basis, environmentalism is progressively taking the social form of a religion and fulfilling some of the individual needs associated with religion, with major political and policy implications. …

… A deeper concern is the expansion of irrationalism in the making of public policy. Of course, no policy debate can ever be reduced to matters of pure reason; there will always be fundamentally clashing values and visions that cannot be settled by rationality alone. But the rhetoric of many environmentalists is more than just a working out of those fundamental differences. The language of the carbon fundamentalists “indicates a shift from [seeking to help] the public and policymakers understand a complex issue, to demonizing disagreement,” as Braden Allenby has written. “The data-driven and exploratory processes of science are choked off by inculcation of belief systems that rely on archetypal and emotive strength…. The authority of science is relied on not for factual ­enlightenment but as ideological foundation for authoritarian policy.” …

A very thought-provoking article.