I know this has been posted already, but really, this is about as extreme as any religious group you could post for me: [MEDIA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFUDEmMjC-c[/MEDIA]
You can find extremists and kooks on any side of any issue. Sure there are environmentalist kooks hugging trees just as there are anti-environmental kooks, like arsonists, burning trees. But to say that environmentalism is a religion is just stupid. Environmentalism has none of the hallmarks of a religion--priests, deities, creation myths, supernatural miracles, observance of rituals, and a moral code.
Which makes you a genius! I kid, Red. But seriously, and I've posted this before, clearly the environmental movement is now a religion. It has all the hallmarks of religion. Lore based loosely on selected facts. Dogma. Clergy. Heretics. And the requirement for faith because none of its believers have actually seen, heard, or can prove 80-90% of the teachings. Environmentalism is to conservation as fundamentalist christianity is to the history of ancient eastern med culture. Roughly. :thumb:
It is not clear to me. Or to the many millions of environmentalists that practice a true religion. Who is its diety? Where is it's priestly hierarchy? What are its rituals? Some dogma and lore maybe, but those are not exclusively religious practices. Heresy?--give me a break. You base your perception on stereotypes of the kookiest tree-huggers that you can imagine, but the core of the environmental movement is based in hard science and scientists are some of the least religious people on the planet. The bulk of environmentalists are hunters who support groups like Duck's Unlimited, outdoorsmen who support the Sierra Club, philanthropists who support The Nature Conservancy, and other normal middle class people from every walk of life. They just don't want to see the earth rush to a future of pollution and blight. I seriously question the sensibility and motives of anybody who doesn't want a clean environment. Bullchit. Try me.
So, if you're not an environmentalist, you don't want a clean environment? I don't believe in man-made global warming, I think the Kyoto accords are bunk. And yet I recycle, conserve energy every chance I get, am going to buy a solar-powered house the first chance I get, feel very strongly about conservation efforts (sane ones). Why? Because some things are logical and don't require religious faith to follow. The deity is Gaia, Red. We've covered this before. The priestly heirarchy is more Sunni Muslim style - a bunch of self-appointed clerics (university profs, media elites, politicians both opportunistic and true believers, and such) who metaphorically stone anyone of their ilk (the heretics and there are thousands) who dares to doubt. Their more ridiculous rituals involve obsessive behaviors like extreme mileage driving, dumpster diving for "wasted food", throwing a "prop trap" cable in front of a Japanese whaler legally operating in waters that the Green Peace crazies "disagree" with, climbing the Golden Gate bridge and blocking traffic for hours to hang a banner, living in trees on a college campus for hundreds of days to stop construction, etc. Less ridiculous rituals include spending 2x more for products advertised as "green", buying undersized "green" vehicles that cost more but don't make up for the cost in gas mileage or gov't kickbacks, paying up to 2x more for "organic" food, becoming a vegetarian to reduce cow farts, etc... There are lots of religions. They all share the same characteristics. Environmentalism has become a religion. I find it interesting that you seem to find it offensive. Calling it a religion doesn't lessen your own religious beliefs any more than Hinduism does. I have observed that as people get older, they tend to either find religion or become more devout in their own religions. There's a large group of 60s free-love teenagers who are aging but resisting embracing Christianity or other organized religions. They've instead found their spiritual release in environmentalism - the feeling that they're living right, according to a code; the feeling of shared beliefs; the idea that they're doing something valuable with their autumn and winter years. And they're selling it with an awesome marketing partner (the mass media) in a very similar way that Christianity spread (the Roman army) and Islam spread (military conquest) - spreading the word through assimilation and saturation. BP and Exxon and other industrial giants are forced to pretend to buy in simply to mitigate the pervasive message. It's an amazing marketing job. When it falls flat on its face, as it has already slowly begun to do, a lot of folks will be on video forever preaching the sermons and they'll wish they had been a little more moderate. It's not wrong. It just is.
As I mentioned before there are some kooks to be found in any group. But you seem to lump all environmentalists as kooks and religious nuts which is simply absurd. Denial of global warming, as we have found on the many threads here, is almost always for political reasons, not scientific ones. Environmental scientists are in consensus about that issue, but those that disagree anyway, having no science to stand on, tend to attempt to ridicule and discredit those scientists by painting them with "kook" brushes and trying to make it sound like all environmentalists are whacko tree huggers. What hogwash. This "Environmentalism is a new religion thing" is just another right-wing political stunt, widely aped in all the conservative blogs. It is another lame attempt to make scientists look like loonies just because the right-wingers cannot offer enough provable facts to refute the issue scientifically. Worse, you try to paint professional environmental scientists who have forgotten more than you will ever know about the environment as a "muslim-like priestly hierarchy" who stone disbelievers. My friend, you understand nothing about the scientific method if you actually believe that. Have you read some of the global warming threads around here? We have argued many times on the subject and I have offered tons of scientific evidence that the anti-environmentalists simply ignore. They offer back rhetoric. The tree-huggers do not represent all environmentalists. Environmentalism is NOT a religion any more than right-wing survivalists, militias, and terrorist bombers are. They are all just extremists who do not represent the majority.
Really Red? ALL environmental scientists are in consensus? Ironic considering that every time some left-wing environmental-kook group releases their dooms-day report of the month with their lists of 10,000 "scientists" who back Global warming theories, it turns out most of the "scientists" have little to nothing, to do with environmental science. There's the big problem with these Global Warming conspiracy theorists. They don't want debate. They don't want scientific study. All they want to do is stifle debate on an issue. Anyone who dares question their "science" is placed into the same category as holocaust deniers. Red doesn't want to admit that one of the underlying foundations of the modern environmentalist movement is political. They've found an issue they can use to promote their extremist political agendas.
con⋅sen⋅sus -noun The majority of opinion: There are always some dissenting scientific voices, which is healthy, but the overwhelming majority of Climatologists have proven that global warming is real. This is untrue. Prove it. I challenge you. The IPCC is the international authority on climate change with thousands of the top experts in the field. Look it up. Be surprised. The scientific consensus on global warming is indisputable. About twice a year around here, somebody waves an article by a politician or a dissenting scientist disputing global warming and it is hailed a proof that the preponderance of scientific evidence gathered over the past few decades is wrong! It just don't work that way. This is complete and utter BS. I know you are a newbie, but there are a dozen or so global warming threads already in FSA alone--long threads--hotly debated threads-- do a search and find out just how wrong you are. The notion that environmentalists don't want debate or scientific study is completely absurd. I can cite them until the cows come home. Backwards as usual. :insane: I've worked for decades in Environmental Science and know many of the top climatologists in the field. They are not in "movements" nor do they have extreme political agendas. They do research and publish their findings in the journals where they withstand scientific scrutiny. Politics has nothing to do with it. No so for the doubters.
