In the wake of the attention recently given to a policy paper that urged the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to elevate environmentalism to a new religion, Czech President Vaclav Klaus is charging climate-change fanatics with having pursued precisely that course of action.
A paper entitled “The UNEP We Want” briefly attracted media attention just prior to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and one line that drew particular attention was the assertion: “The environment should compete with religion as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity.” Such a bizarre assertion would essentially establish the global environmental watchdogs as a type of priesthood for Mother Earth.
With the Copenhagen conference ending with more of a whimper than a bang in adoption of the Copenhagen Accord (rather than the more sweeping treaty which had been promoted for months), President Klaus is sounding the warning that the relative failure of the conference has not dulled the fanaticism of the radical environmentalists. According to FOXNews.com:
As the Copenhagen Climate conference comes to a conclusion amidst riots by demonstrators and scrambling by policymakers, Czech President Vaclav Klaus has a message for the world: Global warming is a "new religion," not a science….
"I’m convinced that after years of studying the phenomenon, global warming is not the real issue of temperature," said Klaus, an economist by training. "That is the issue of a new ideology or a new religion. A religion of climate change or a religion of global warming. This is a religion which tells us that the people are responsible for the current, very small increase in temperatures. And they should be punished."
The connection between radical environmentalism and ‘new age’ religion is hardly new. The seemingly instinctive anti-Christian twitch even manifested itself in a humorous way during the Copenhagen conference, with the decision to ban Christmas trees from the conference site. Although the live trees would have helped to offset some of the massive amounts of supposed “greenhouse gases” being generated by delegates, the religious connotations of Christmas trees were ideologically intolerable for the Internationalist elite.
Since Christmas is a religious holiday, it has no place at a United Nations event, said officials planning the event.
A sponsor providing fir trees for the conference’s Christmas trees learned this the hard way when it was turned away by planners of the international event, the Copenhagen Post reported….
"We have to remember that this is a U.N. conference and, as the center then becomes U.N. territory, there can be no Christmas trees in the decor, because the U.N. wishes to maintain neutrality," said Denmark Foreign Ministry official Svend Olling.
The Earth Charter Initiative — which counts Michael Gorbachev, Maurice Strong and Steven Rockefeller among its commissioners — has sought to cultivate a religious ‘angle’ for its mission:
Between 2007 and 2008 ECI implemented a project on Religion and Sustainability that focused on outreach to religious groups and leaders to seek their institutions engagement in using the Earth Charter. This project also involved research and the development of education materials designed specifically for religious audiences.
In early 2009, as part of the ECI decentralization strategy, a Task Force on Religion, Spirituality and Ethics was formed. This Task Force aims to engage a broad range of individuals, institutions, and organizations concerned with religion, spirituality, ethics, to use the Earth Charter in their efforts toward creating a just, peaceful, and sustainable future for the Earth Community.
In particular, the Task Force is reaching out to:
1) Leaders of religious institutions and communities
2) Scholars and theologians of the world’s religions as well as ethicists
3) Individuals and organizations interested in linking religion, spirituality, and ethics to issues of sustainability
Getting back to Klaus’ observations, it seems evident that, having apparently abandoned the old, primarily Christian, religious beliefs which were commonly held throughout the developed world, the radical environmental fringe which dominates much of the “global warming” debate has not abandoned the need for religion. They simply have adopted a new religion. Again, as Klaus told FOXNews.com, the fate of those living under the adherents of the new environmental religion would find that the tenets of the new faith would shape their lives in terrifying ways:
"We’ll be the victims of irrational ideology. They will try to dictate to us how to live, what to do, how to behave," Klaus said. "What to eat, travel, and what my children should have. This is something that we who lived in the communist era for most of our lives — we still feel very strongly about. We are very sensitive in this respect. And we feel various similarities in their way of arguing or not arguing. In the way of pushing ahead ideas regardless of rational counter-arguments."
Photo of Vaclav Klaus: AP Images
