Steppin' Into Eden, Yea Brother

Weirdness today from the New York Times' John Tierney, "And on the Eighth Day, God Went Green", who takes off on the formation of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, a group of Evangelical Christians advocating a proactive response to human-induced global warning, to riff dismissively on environmentalism generally. Tierney argues that Evangelical Christian's joining the global warming battle was predictable because "America has one truly national religion: environmentalism." At first blush, equating environmentalism, which is marked by a concern with global warming, with religion seems odd because the growing awareness of the threat from global warming is a product of the scientific community, a group which has a fair share of agnostics and atheists within its ranks.

But then, the Religion of Environmentalism is the favored Conservative meme in their attempt to stem the tide of growing awareness of global warming. Conservatives by nature are uncomfortable with the scientific process with its ceaseless prodding at established orthodoxy and its moral value-neutral logic. The Bush Conservatives also have a serious problem with the scientific community's reliance on facts. The Bush Administration is much more comfortable in dealing with arguments, as they ordinarily do in the political and policy realms, because arguments have emotional components which can be tweaked or twisted as the case requires. Global warming science is a particular thorn in Bush's side because consideration of the potential consequences leads in fairly short order to a re-examination of the role and unfettered primacy of the Oil Industry in our economy and our environment, and Bush is a creature of Big Oil. Chris Mooney's website is a virtual clearing house of information on what he terms "The Republican War on Science".

Tierney is a soldier in that war, and his column is engaged in the undermining of science by equating it with religious faith. Rather than answer the hard science behind global warming, Tierney (and Conservative Republicans) instead attempt to sweep up people who acknowledge scientific fact with those for whom environmentalism is a spiritual commitment (the tree-hugging, open-toed sandal crowd) and then to dismiss them all as a bunch of hippie dingbats.

It may be true that global warming appeals to the finger-wagging Calvinist scolds among us, but the fact that various groups, whether they are Calvinists or New Age Gaians, project their moral judgments onto empirical data does not say anything at all about the efficacy of the science produced that data. You do not need to have a bleak view of American capitalism to be able to read a thermometer. The world is getting hotter Mr. Tierney, and our industrial output is helping to make it so. That only becomes a moral condemnation if we fail to do anything about it.

Tierney ends his column with a classic false choice by setting climatic sciences in opposition to global efforts to combat disease and lack of drinking water. As if third world drinking water and sanitation would ever be a priority for this Administration! Why there would be Evian and Scotts Tissue for everyone everywhere, but for the enormous drain on the budget from this Administration's slavish commitment to slowing global warming.