CONTRIBUTOR
What does it take to avert the end of the world?
For most of human history this has been a question for religion. And the answer has usually been that human beings must repent of their sins. They must surrender some comfort and luxury to appease angry gods. In primitive times worshippers might sacrifice a bull — or even a human being.
Today climate science provides an end-times prophecy that works in much the same way as the religious apocalypticism of old. Religion enchants the world, lending spiritual significance to every part of life. Climate change makes everything from charging your iPhone to skipping beef for dinner a potentially salvific act.
Cattle once again have to be sacrificed; they emit too much methane and CO2. And the dietary laws that climate science prescribes are as exacting as those of any religion. Every day is a fast day when you subsist on tofu and insect protein. (RELATED: BASTASCH: The UN’s Newest Climate Report Is A Woke Dumpster Fire Masquerading As Science)
Purity and ritual cleanliness are religious concepts that find a remarkable parallel in the way of life that climate science promotes. By default, Apple’s phones are now set to “clean energy charging” mode, which takes longer to recharge the battery but contributes in however small a way to saving us from the weather.
Well-educated liberals laugh when a televangelist claims a hurricane is God’s punishment for America’s acceptance of homosexuality. Yet liberals also believe that weather is a moral force, punishing Americans for the sins of capitalism. When the remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded the New York subway, liberals assigned the deluge a cosmic meaning as a manifestation of climate change.
Bad weather is never simply bad weather anymore; every hurricane, flood or tornado is now imbued with deeper significance. Bad weather is humanity’s fault. We can only stop it if we live our lives a little more miserably.
Or much more miserably: If ordinary people are inconvenienced by climate ideology, true believers are prone to despair.
Climate “doomers” believe there is nothing to live for. They don’t want to have children, because who would want to bring children into a dying world? And since human beings are the cause of the climate crisis, inflicting more of them on the planet is morally wrong.
Last year on Earth Day one climate activist took his beliefs to their logical conclusion. Wynn Bruce burned himself alive outside the Supreme Court, a self-immolating martyr to climate ideology.
When the religious impulse is perverted, it turns from love of God to hatred for humanity. In 15th-century Florence the radical Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola preached apocalypse and called for penitent citizens to burn their luxuries. Savonarola’s “bonfire of the vanities” consumed priceless manuscripts and works of art.
Recently climate activists in Europe have targeted museums and glued themselves to famous paintings. Are museums a leading source of carbon dioxide emissions? Of course not. But like Savonarola, climate vandals want to show that they hold human genius in contempt and beauty is vanity when the fate of everything is at stake.
Every year the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that the end is nigh. This year’s report claims that global warming will pass a point of no return within the next decade.
That’s a smart prediction — not because it’s true but because it’s politically convenient. A 10-year deadline is close enough to stir up alarm but not so close as to be easily disproved when doomsday rolls around and nothing happens.
If Greta Thunberg follows the IPCC’s marketing strategy, she’ll save herself embarrassment. She recently had to delete a tweet from 2018 that said the world only had five years left.
The day of reckoning should always be just over the horizon, with no firm due date. “Within” 10 years does the job well. As in the Gospel, no man can tell the day or the hour when the world will pass away.
Anyone who knows the geological history of our planet is aware that over millions of years our planet has been much colder and much hotter than it is today. Our present era is one of steady warming, not because of human activity but because of the planet’s own long-range cycles.
If we cut all CO2 emissions tomorrow, the world would continue to warm. Floods and forest fires certainly would not cease.
The fact that the politics of climate science so closely mirrors religious apocalypticism ought to prompt some reflection.
End-times prophecy and the role of human guilt in the fate of the cosmos are not scientific concerns at all. From a purely scientific perspective, the world will keep spinning no matter how wicked or angelic humanity might be.
Climate ideology derives its power from its resemblance to religion. But it’s a poor substitute for a real faith, offering no hope of redemption by a benevolent God, but only punishment for our irredeemable sins; our lives will always have to get worse until the weather improves.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Nice editorial, but it’s not going to stop the climate zealots.
In two or three millennia archeologists will discover acres and acres of concrete blocks, each with a ring of iron oxide in the centre. They will conclude that it is the equivalent of a linear Stonehenge and clearly of religious significance. They will be right.
Carbon credits anyone?
“One particularly well-known Catholic method of exploitation in the Middle Ages was the practice of selling indulgences, a monetary payment of penalty which, supposedly, absolved one of past sins and/or released one from purgatory after death.
What does it take to avert the end of the world?
For most of human history this has been a question for religion.
christianity? nope there is no averting the end
buddism: world doesnt end or begin
eschatology varies wildly across religions.
look in frickin high school i had to take 3 years of comparitive religion, including having to
attend services in multiple religions.
you?
you had to google eschatology
Science says the Sun will, in a few billion years, expand and destroy the Earth.
“Climate Science” says CO2 will do it much sooner unless we do …
I’m willing to wait.
Vain speculation, self induced false-apocalyptic fear and self righteous-pseudo-saviors are a problem. Let’s face it; fear and fantasy sells. Machismo and feminine sex appeal used to sell but now it’s fear. Just think of the endless medical commercials and the endlessly mouthed imperative “be safe”. Please don’t tell me what to do. It would be better to simply bless me with a goodbye.
In the 50’s and 60’s it was the spread of communism and the threat of revolution and nuke annihilation and the boomers finally bringing and end to war. In the 1980’s it was alien abduction and asteroid impacts. After 2000 the fear was pandemics. Now it’s fear about everything.
Seriously, enough fear will splinter families and communities unless the fear unifies mobilizes people against an identified enemy….and that enemy cannot be all people. Or as Putin in Feb 2021 in his address to WEF, “a war of All against All”. Or AI against all LOL. The enemy is fear itself.. (Churchill).
It’s time for American’s to put away all fear and take hold of calmness, courage, hope, peace and love.
Fear and anxiety is highly contagious. My wife and I decided to do everything we can to side step fear. We decided to focus n people we encountered who were fearful of many things…. to encourage and love them. It’s amazing what a home cooked meal and laughter can do for a worried person. This is why we had so much fun during the pandemic up to now. Politics has it’s root in real life.
‘[E]schatology varies wildly across religions.’
So what? The problem with “Climatism”, whether it’s a secular or religious movement, is that there is no penalty for any misery its adherents might bestow upon others in the present.
he problem with “Climatism”, whether it’s a secular or religious movement, is that there is no penalty for any misery its adherents might bestow upon others in the present.
why should there be a penalty in the present?, you playing god now?
is there a penalty for for future damage cO2 May cause?
and if the future damage from CO2 doesn’t happen, will here be a penalty for those who created so much damage to the world’s economy by forcing undependable energy on us?
Hillary of Poitiers
Martin of Tours
Hydatius
Hippolytus of Rome
Sextus Julius Africanus
Irenaeus
Beatus of Liébana
Gregory of Tours
Thiota
All in the first millennium CE. Then in the latter half of the 10th century a whole raft of people including Pope Sylvester II.
Tours in France seems to have been the IPCC of the time.
The general consensus of Muslim scholars agree there would be tremendous and distinctive signs before the world ends. Among which would be an era of trials and tribulations, a time of immorality followed by mighty wars, worldwide unnatural phenomena and the return of justice to the world.
I’ve always thought that eschatology was the study of scat.
I haven’t changed my mind after looking up the word.
“you had to google eschatology”
No I didn’t.
Climate change does not have an eschatology. It has a dystopic vision for humanity. It’s prophecies are are a rationalistic and speculative pseudoscience not religion.
Christianity’s eschatology is that we are living in the end times since the ascension of Christ and that the a new creation, ( new heavens and earth) is coming at the eschaton. So you are right! There is no averting the end. You are living in it but the end is only the beginning of the story.
Google eschatology? In your face Mosher!
I used Duck Duck Go.
At least with the religions of old (especially those that revolved around agriculture and, by extension, the weather and climate) had the excuse of having very little scientific knowledge of the earth’s climate. They didn’t know about volcanic eruptions half way around the world and their effects on worldwide weather. They didn’t know about El Nino/La Ninas. They didn’t know about solar cycles or sunspots. The best they could do was to pray and sacrifice to various deities and hope their crops didn’t fail. And hope the rains came when they were supposed to, and hope they didn’t get too much rain or snow.
What is truly sad today is that even with all of the scientific knowledge that has accumulated (much of it due to the industrial fossil fueled revolution which gave people more time to study such things and to build machines to aid in those studies) this kind of pseudo-scientific religion can still come about.
People who think that the end of religion (at least organized religions like Islam, Christianity and Judaism) will lead to a more peaceful world without the trappings of religion are badly mistaken.
It seems human nature, being what it is, will still cause people to gravitate to that which can be used as a tool to enslave and control others. Not saying all religions were/are like that, but, as history has shown, some were very much that way.
Perhaps the answer is to abolish democracy?
The only problem then is, what to replace it with. I will gladly take absolute power myself, but I can see two problems therewith 1) There is only one of me, and about 8,000,000,000 of you. 2) I will die fairly soon anyway, (and probably a great deal sooner than I should prefer).
Just don’t name the UN your successor!
NO WAY!
I’d have said “most” rather than “some”…
Well said Lee. I too have often thought about the need for human beings to have a “religion” in their lives. It may not matter what form that religion or belief system takes as long as it fills the space in the human soul for a meaning of life. My current hypothesis is that the enemies of the western free world have pushed the “climate catastrophe” religion as a way to destabilize countries and force them into an energy shortage position. Once short of available and efficient energy sources the target countries are much easier to capture and dominate.
Daniel points out the ridiculous foolishness of the climate zealots superbly.
The fact that the politics of climate science so closely mirrors religious apocalypticism ought to prompt some reflection.
the real question is Why the notion of apocalypse is so pervasive across cultures and history
IT’S BUILT into our way of thinking, as every Jungian knows.
jesus even you guys tell fables about grid collapse and economic destruction.
you believe OIl is the fountain of youth
https://phillyjunginstituteblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/the-archetype-of-apocalypse-in-culture-and-dreams-a-jungian-perspective/
There is no climate emergency, therefor faith.
If the grid collapses it will be due to specific government policy.
Slight differences there.
I have, from first-hand experience, learned not to trust the word of a cocaine addict.
Besides, Velikovsky has already set the minimum conversational standard for apocalyptic mechaninics. Eschatology seems to rest mostly on misrepresentations by tithe collectors, and archaeologists hell-bent on finding ritual significance in every potshard.
P.S. English not being my first language, I always thought ‘eschatology’ derived from ‘scat’, an opinion I long held, as reading the work of renowned eschatologists, I could clearly recognise their propensity to talk sh
Climate is defined as 30 years of weather in a given area. So if you want to fight climate change, you have to change the weather for 30 years first.
I’m sure glad that scientists discovered that raising taxes is how to change the weather, aren’t you?
I asked ChatGPT if wind turbines and solar panels can alter the weather. Its responses:
So even Chat GPT concludes there is no point in installing wind turbines and solar panels to alter the weather. If they cannot alter the weather then they cannot alter the climate.
…but, f’rinstance, an array of whirligigs perturbing the air atop a hill that alters rainfall patterns downwind… would constitute changing the climate of that (admittedly localised) area.
Is climate not just the prevailing weather pattern at any one location?
Words share much with Pratchett’s ladies of negotiable affection; they’ll do anything you pay them for.
Climate religion is filling the void formed by the decline of monotheistic religion.
Weird times we live in for sure!
And with readers on this site being more science-focused than the average person on the street, it is hard to know how to combat it … as for most people , climate is not a matter of science but a matter of faith.
Motor vehicles have been a useful force in modern human natural selection. They are a significant factor in the death of youthful idiots.
There are some early signs that Chatbots could be useful in weeding out climate zealots through suicide. Just encourage idiots to use them and believe the propaganda they spew out.
Excellent editorial.
There is something in human nature that requires a god, or at least a higher purpose to existence. In the west when you take away Judaism and Christianity you creep back into neo-paganism.
Another way to put it is: Calling climate science a religion gives religion a bad name.
Makes you wonder what would happen to society if the media honestly reported that there is no climate problem. What would all the fanatics do?
Perhaps hype a new pandemic?
They would stone the messenger
They do it every day
They’d probably worry about the comiing Iceage, history has a habit of repeating itself.
then they’d demand we burn more coal
That’s the intermediate state of the meme. The end game is a néomarxiste plan far more evil and deadly than Marx’s stringent philosophy.
The genius in establishing the United States was the establishment clause.
The problem today is that our government and the people we rely on for intellectual guidance have succumbed to a religion.
Nowhere in our system of checks and balances do we have a remedy for this. The executive branch now rules by executive action because the legislative branch is deadlocked and filled with extremists. And the executive branch subverts the judicial branch by appointing more extremists.
This sort of thing has happened before, but the perfect storm, so to speak, is that our intellectual leaders have taken up anti-intellectualism in the name of equity (rather than its antonym, equality).
They’ve picked “climate science” as the religion part of this race to the bottom, but it’s just one mechanism within a larger part of what’s happening. Another round of Dark Ages approaches, and it’s not going to be dark simply because of the lack of electricity.
The BRICS nations do not care what religion other developed nations follow. They will carry on regardless and become ever stronger economically and militarily..
Russia recorded its highest ever current account surplus in 2022. China hit new record high surplus in 2022.
It’s worth remembering that Christianity (sorta rhymes with Insanity, doesn’t it) produced the Inquisition to punish non-believers, and criminalized natural truth such as that spoken by Copernicus and Galileo. The likes of Greta, and that pink-haired kid featured in a video on a recent post, plus the Belgian who recently committed suicide, are firm indications that humanity has flaws that can easily cause such inhumanity again.
All it takes is enough zealots to form a quorum, as it did in Rome. As a species, we’ve not advanced far.
Christianity did that.
But it’s also the only religion that specifically tried to uplift the poor and down trodden
Tom Holland has written a couple of very good books on it.
I was raised Catholic but it never really “took”!
Inquisitions were not to “punish non-believers” but to keep believer doctrine pure and people from damnation. Their victims had every chance to recant and obviously took their heretical beliefs as serious as their tormentors.
Both Copernicus and Galilei were sponsored by the church, the inventor of universities and builder of observatories. Copernicus prospered, just did not see the need to make controversial and confrontational theological statements as did Galilei, who was very much a believer who saw a case for studying “God’s work” as mathematician alongside studying “God’s Word” in the bible. Science hero Galilei BTW also believed a lot of rubbish about nature, like comets being reflections of light from earth. Giordano Bruno while appearing as ingenious cosmologist, did so from a pre-scientific mythological perspective.
On the religious theme, I was somewhat in there, but then I had my own epiphany, my own crisis on the road to Damascus and I unfortunately began to think, the ultimate sin to monotheism.
Once you read and think there is no going back
From the linked article – BASTACH – The UN’s Newest Climate Report Is A Woke Dumpster Fire Masquerading As Science
“Variations of the words “equity” and “inequity” appear 31 times in the 36-page document. Variations of “inclusive” and “inclusion” appear 17 times. The document even mentions “colonialism” and repeatedly refers to climate and social “justice” for “marginalized” groups.”
…And what does the UN push all the time? – renewables. Renewables manufactured from materials “mined” by slave child labour in desperately poor countries. The UN and IPCC is disgusting, its elite hypocrisy is obscene.
One major problem with the UN… when college administrations metastasized, it infected the Ivies first. Obviously, the infection spread from Columbia to the NYT to the UN.
It’s completely out of control, and the science deniers at the UN are refusing the administrative inoculations.
The worst and most obvious symptom: every topic eventually leads to colonialism and equity and diversity.
At this point, I think the damage to higher education and the UN is permanent and the only solution is to allow these institutions the dignity of peaceful euthanization.
They’ll be replaced regardless. The big question is whether what replaces them is led by the western world or the existing simply belongs to the developing Russia/China/Iran axis.
I am not looking forward to the day when the NYT praises the axis when it names Kim Il-Sun leader of the UN human rights commission.
“But Religion” is boring as hell:
https://climateball.net/but-religion/
It’s not that ‘climate science makes a bad religion’, it’s that bad science + politics makes a bad religion.
Science, politics, religion… Add economics theory and medicine, and you have a fairly complete list of Belief systems, each with a plethora of high priests, profits (sic) and messiahs. As each of these (religions) are crumbling, Mankind is confronted with an existential crisis, a one-sided war with an invisible assailant, a daemon that is busy murdering millions and millions of future bloodlines, truncated by hormones and surgery at an age when you have no idea of conception, or why the adults around you are so obsessed with your tiny, undeveloped genitals.
The last religion standing seems to be psychiatry; see them lead author policy documents on sustainability, climate, economics, viral epidemics, gender genetics…
“Wynn Bruce burned himself alive outside the Supreme Court, a self-immolating martyr to climate ideology.”
How much “carbon pollution” did his burning body produce?
religion- “the opiate of the masses”- Karl Marx
Which is the bigger “opiate”? Religion or the Marxian political and economic theories for the stupid and gullible?
they’re both opiates- hardly makes much difference which is bigger
Now Fentanyl, Heroin, Oxycodone and Benzodiazepines are the opium of the masses. Maybe faith, hope, peace and love are not such a bad thing at after all. Marx’s nihilism and the eugenics arising from the same philosophical root, trashed the world for decades in the 20th century.
Peace and love are nice. Faith is dangerous. Hope is a waste of energy. And, I have no respect for any form of Marxism. It’s not like it’s either one or the other. The world is more complicated than that. Those drugs you mention are not used by the masses. Most people prefer booze- that’s the drug of the masses.
8 Million are dependent on prescription opiates. 3 million use street opiates. 40 million take benzodiazepines. 108,000 Americas died from opioid poisoning in 2022. Double that number for people who died from the compilations of opioid use. And double that number summed for the individuals who will spend the rest of their lives in nursing homes.
Seems like we we are getting close to critical mass. It’s so bad that it is depressing life expectancy in America which has been in decline since 2015 due to the growing opioid crisis.
Hope requires faith. Peace and love flows from faith and hope. Nihilism is a faith… It is the belief that nothing is better than something because nothing doesn’t expect anything from me and I can make it up as I go along.
There is no hope in nothing and peace and love rarely flow from hopelessness.
Peace and love are nice- but formal religion becomes a problem- it usually turns into just another bureacracy which represses people. You can have peace and love without formal religion.
The climate change movement is nihilistic to the core. Nihilism is not religion by definition. The apocalyptical fear that the climate change urban-myth/hysteria preaches is; humans will destroy mother earth. (False messages always have a kernel of truth, people can destroy the human habitat….war, famine, pestilence, etc)
There is no belief in a deity that speaks or reveals itself to it’s believers. At best there is a highly speculative pantheism and in some cases a loose pagan mythology which is rooted in human a priori reasoning. It is not unlike the 20th century movements that trashed the world for decades. Eugenics is not a religion it is rooted in 19th century Hegelism….Darwin.
What looks and feels religious is how apocalyptical fear creates a new grid of self righteous behaviors, actions, thoughts and legalistic contingencies. Historically, religion seems to always pit people against people. It’s not religion per se, it is self righteous people with no humility or sense of humor that pit people against people. This sort of evil is as old as mankind and it has been a plague constantly at the door of the Christian Church, which is rooted in the Love of Christ not pitting people against people.