While I’ve been avoiding posting on this topic for quite some time, when a UK court makes a ruling like this, and the UK Telegraph makes a headline like the one below, it becomes hard to ignore. We live in interesting times.
From the UK Telegraph:
Climate change belief given same legal status as religion
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.
excerpts:
…
In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said 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”.
The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.
…
John Bowers QC, representing Grainger, had argued that adherence to climate change theory was “a scientific view rather than a philosophical one”, because “philosophy deals with matters that are not capable of scientific proof.”
That argument has now been dismissed by Mr Justice Burton, who last year ruled that the environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore was political and partisan.
The decision allows the tribunal to go ahead, but more importantly sets a precedent for how environmental beliefs are regarded in English law.
Read the complete article here:
Climate change belief given same legal status as religion
Note: keep the comments clean, moderators will snip off color comments with abandon. -A
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“In Gore We Trust”
I don’t think so!
An employer should neither inhibit the practice of religion, nor should it support it. In other words, it should remain neutral.
If environmentalism has equal status with religion, it seems that employers should refrain from supporting environmental causes. It is not the responsibility of an employer to facilitate a green lifestyle.
Now AGW is right up there with Scientology.
This is great! Let’s set the same precedent in US courts and then it will be precluded from being taught in schools.
I’m not sure that this will be well received for the alarmist. For years that they been telling how it is science that back up their claim, now they got stab by one of their own who proves that it is backed up by a belief system.
Sometimes you have to be careful for what you wish for.
You all missed one of my favorite religious tenants.
The first thing every human born does once expelled from our mother (Gaia) is we inhale oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide, there by committing “Original Sin”.
The parallels between environmentalism and Christianity are beyond mere coincidence.
Al, baby, looking good in those robes. They really helps hide those cheeseburgers from PeTA. So, when the believers go to make their version of the sign of the cross, will it be Gore, Hansen, Cap and Trade?
Al Gore now joins that elite club that includes L Ron Hubbard .. those who went from writing science fiction to starting a religion.
And to think that Al Gore funked out of divinity school.
Coming soon to the UK, Companies are sued for not cutting off the heads of enough Infidels.
[snip – inappropriate suggestion]
As The Register points out, this is a two edged sword that could prevent someone who is not a true believer being hounded out of a job.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/04/green_philosophy_ok/
[snip – sorry I have my limits, been hit with that link several times, won’t go there, – Anthony]
A financial dealer must disclose whether he owns any stocks he is recommending, since it might influence his analysis. A political commentator is usually labelled as democrate or republican, since it will colour his comments. Maybe climate scientist should now disclose their “philosophical beliefs”, since clearly, it could inflence their work. Wouldn’t that be great?
ScientistforTruth @ur momisugly 9:40:44
Thought provoking. We’ve always talked about the weather and we even used to sacrifice to the Gods of it. But don’t sacrifice my virgins for your superstitions.
Now, sans doute, discussion of energy footprint is worth doing. We need to lose the concept of carbon footprint, because it is a simulacrum of the paradigm in which you are interested, and not an authentic one. CO2 is a trace gas with trace climatic effect. Your need for a new encompassing spirituality will not be satisfied by carbon demonization. It is a false god.
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“this is a two edged sword that could prevent someone who is not a true believer being hounded out of a job.”
Which is a great source of anxiety for people who might work in a place like the San Francisco area whose corporate management are all ardent “believers”.
er, that’s SfT @ur momisugly 9:44:04. That’s a doG of a theology you have there.
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Good news I think. Now that the CAGW hypothesis has been falsified, all that the green’s have got is faith that the climate apocalypse will happen and we’ll all fry in the pits of hell if we fail to stop using our SUV’s.
This will be a short lived religion, as the god of cold spreads misery and famine across the globe, then they will return to belief in the oldest god – Sol.
This makes the similarity of Al Gore with Elmer Gantry even more accurate.
“sorry I have my limits, been hit with that link several times, won’t go there”
Yeah, it is “out there”. I happened to see it linked from someone’s twitter post today and it gave me a chuckle. Had it been from “Weekly World News” or something, I would have ignored it.
“This judge is perhaps a bit more subtle than you think – he’s the one who stated that Al Gores movie had so many errors a list of them had to be read out when it was shown in schools.”
That explains everything. If the judge had not presided over AIT, he would have believed that AGW was a scientific fact and therefore would have ruled that believe in AGW was not a religion. But now he knows otherwise.
Surely this is genetic, this obsession with religion and climate change?
Either you have the ‘stupid’ gene and prefer fiction to fact [Isn’t that what religion is based on?] or you have the ‘Copernicus’ gene and prefer accurate scientific data on which to base a philosophy.
Only in an English Court ruled by a ‘stupid’ Judge could AGW be construed as a religion.
Just off to sharpen Occam’s Razor…………
Russ,
I was thinking the same thing. But even beyond that, would they be able to pass any climate change legislation afterwards? Wouldn’t that be supporting one religious belief?
Currently, there is no way that they could enact any christian or islamic legislation which would punish (read tax) any non-compliance. (I hope my saying this doesn’t give our leaders any more bad ideas.)
On the other hand, the AGW supporters might be able to fight to get “In Climate Change We Trust” printed on all our money. 😉
But isn’t the change to a religious status a good step? If the Government of a given country is supposed to secular, doesn’t this mean that they can’t have positions regarding religious beliefs, in this case environmentalism? Wouldn’t this mean that they couldn’t sign treaties like Copenhagen’s, to the danger of the country becoming a religious state (just like the Islamic states in the Middle East, or the Christian state of Vatican)?
Perhaps the Club of Rome was set up there as a rival to the Roman Catholic religion. See an analysis of the history of the global warming religion at http://www.green-agenda.com/globalrevolution.html
One more thing,
Can you guys stop equating scientology with environmentalism, it’s not at all the same, although it would be an interesting debate.
Scientology is a business model masquerading as a religion, while environmentalism is Christianity masquerading as science.
That’s what makes it so popular, millions of disaffected Christians can keep the affectations of religion they grew up with without the original mythology and patriarchy they feel is no longer relevant in their lives.
Actually it’s funny how humans need some kind of structured faith system in their lives. It would make for a interesting Anthropology or Sociology paper.