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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
One good thing about this ruling: now the government cannot force people to use compact fluorescent light bulbs, drive fuel efficient cars, or paint their roofs white. Mandating such environmental policies in private life will now violate freedom of religion! Now society cannot legally force us dissenters to obey green laws because that would take away our freedom to not believe humans are causing climate change.
If anything, this ruling helps the skeptic cause instead of hurting it.
It also highlights just how ridiculous the believers are: evidence will not alter their beliefs.
Just out… we need to fix climate change, else…
IF THE world fails to act soon on climate change, “preserving security and stability even at current levels will become increasingly difficult”. That’s the blunt message of a statement released in Washington DC (PDF) last week by 10 high-ranking military officials from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the US.
http://www.envirosecurity.org/news/MACStatement.pdf
This is worst than Religion… They use the climate change excuse to spend money on war and armament!
I am astounded with all the rest and I know it’s not really the point of this thread, but my guess is this preliminary rulling will turn out to be much ado about nothing.
Two observations:
– Sorry, but no sane employer would ever fire someone merely because of their personal position on climate change – much bigger fish to fry.
– No doubt it will be revealed that Mr. Nicholson was let go because his behavior was inappropriate and disruptive to the organization.
Mr. Nicholson will find that he cannot use his personal belief regarding climate as an excuse for unprofessional behavior.
We need a similar ruling in the US so that both cap n trade & Coppenhagen would violate separation of church & state & effectively kill both !
kim (09:44:30) :
“Gore is now getting explicit with the religiosity. He’s creating seminars in his climate training that are specific for religions, such as Hindu and Islam.
They’ll be burning books next. Or people”.
Kim, history tells us they start burning the books after that…..
ScientistForTruth (09:44:04) :
I have given an introduction to some of this here http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/ and here are a few extracts about what Mike Hulme, the founding director of this Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia (UEA), has to say:
Which is nothing more than a garden variety, postmodern word salad.
Al Gore could become the world’s first global warming billionaire:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html
I remember reading about some hotels removing bibles and replacing them with AIT. That was back in 2007, I guess they were just ahead of their time.
What’s the problem? All we’ve got to do is nail our 95 theses to the church door and there we have it – a full-scale reformation leading to a revival of religious wars. Much better to worry about that than non-existent global warming.
Great picture!!!
(See… those years as a divinity student did pay off in the end.)
Interesting link here. It’s an article about the Newsweek preview of Gore’s new book, in which he explores the “spiritual side” of the AGW debate, i.e. he’s setting it up as a religion, with himself as “pope”.
He also says that CO2 is only 40% to blame for “global warming” which is an amazing admission by the man. I’ve just posted it to reddit, so if there’s any redditors here, please vote it up.
The decision is available in full at http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2009/0219_09_0311.html
JimB wrote:
“…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…”
I didn’t think Anthony allowed religious debate on this site – either pro or con. For the record though, I know many, many Christians since I am one myself and every one of them (including me) are AGW skeptics.
Aside from your remarks that are offensive to people of faith, your premise is simply wrong.
JimB in Canada, you may be right about the religiously disaffected (or deprived of religious training by their parents) flocking to this new secular religion, but wrong about it being Christianity in another guise. Analogous forms aren’t necessarily derived from the same source no matter how many superficial similarities may be found. Authentic (ie, essentially the original theology) Christianity finds environmentalism to be a “false god.” Syncretic (blended with other beliefs) Christianity OTOH is just glomming onto another fad as it has done many times in the past.
I am not sure why he got the pony and trap. It’s not a nice thing to happen to anyone.
The uk is in the depths of a recession which is taking it’s toll and especially in construction. If the executive so firmly believes in AGW then he should be happy that CO2 emissions are being reduced due to the lack of construction activity and of course he should be all happy and clappy at getting the pony and trap, because his company ain’t developing much.
I am puzzled why anyone with such firm beliefs would work for a property developer the outcome will always be CO2 emissions.
A true story:
A Jehova witness recently joined the UK blood transfusion unit after a week in the job he said he had a firm belief that giveing blood transfusions was evil and against God’s will.
The high court agreed and have demanded that where he works no more blood is taken or distributed for blood transfusions.
Another victory for common incense.
Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.
— Voltaire
Or:
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
Terror and fear, the weapons of Stalin and Al Gore. I’d never believed such was possible in democratic countries.
[Dies irae, dies illa ~ E]
So, does this mean no more public displays? Just curious…..
Equal protection as religion is not a advantageous status. Religion is so protected, you are supposed to keep it to yourself. Interesting can of worms here. Does the government have to stop promoting it? Do institutions that promote it have to register as churches? What other beliefs will become protected?
I think we should all form the Religion Of The Eternal Carbon Flame. The liturgy of this religion is based on the fact that plants need CO2 to live and without plants the earth (of Gaia or whatever) would be devoid of life. In order to ensure that this does not happen and the end of times comes on us we will generate leptons through the use of carbon-carbon bonds in the presence of oxygen. Any restriction of this would violate the seperation of church and state.
Hey, it beats Scientology…
That’s the proof of the new religion …
The ruling implies that AGW is more a belief system than science. Maybe there is more to this judge than meets the eye. As we have seen, he is the same judge who ruled that Al Gore’s Hollywood movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is so riddled with scientific howlers (at least nine) that a list of them must be read out whenever it is shown in schools.
This being so, then presumably it will follow that those who do not subscribe to Man-made Climate Change can claim discrimination if they are taxed to stop something that does not exist.
As an antidote to this silliness…looks like I was the first to nominate WUWT for best science blog for the 2009 Weblog Awards…a far more stimulating breath of fresh air than the stall mustiness of St. Gore’s prophecies of gloom and doom.
That should be stale mustiness
As AndrewWH points out (10:21:48) there is a good piece in the Register.
Yes, the law is silly and a silly judgement has sprung from it. I do hope (without conviction) that it might also set a helpful precedent which could assist a sceptic being fired or disciplined for being consistently off message.
But my sympathy for his employers is greatly reduced by the fact that they actually employed someone to be a “Sustainability Officer”. What did they expect?
This is perhaps the explanation why they didn’t sack him for being a gullible nutter.
Since “anthropogenic” Climate Change or Global Warming is definitely a religion (meets all the criteria that you can imagine), this makes perfect sense.