OP-ED: The climate-change religion: How long before human sacrifices?

By AUGUSTO ZIMMERMANN

Forgoing procreation, disrupting fellow humans’ lives, and wishing for death on a massive scale, environmentalism shows cult-like tendencies

History teaches us that some ancient civilisations killed their children to change the weather. They used to practice child sacrifice to appease their gods in an attempt to court their good graces. Those primitive peoples believed that through human sacrifice, the forces of nature could be coerced in their favour. For example, one of the ways the Aztecs honoured their gods was by killing people in a field with arrows so that their blood might fertilise the land.

The modern environmentalist movement is often compared to a religion. It certainly thinks that humans can change the weather, and it includes a vision of sin and repentance – damnation and salvation. Above and beyond the presence of actual neo-pagans and Gaia worshippers in its ranks, the environmentalist movement itself is displaying characteristics of a nature-worshipping cult – and a remarkably anti-human one at that. Many of its supporters effectively believe that the world has a cancer, and that cancer is called the human race.

The Just Stop Oil movement provides a compelling example of how modern environmentalism has become a primitive and barbaric religion by any other name. In October 2022, iconoclastic activists targeted Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) in the National Gallery, London, for a “climate emergency” protest. By damaging works of art in museums, blocking roads, stopping play at sports matches and more, these eco-fascists reveal an environmentalism not only endowed with apocalyptic overtones but also with an intent on making life miserable for fellow humans and destroying some of the finest examples of historic human achievement.

Of course, a reasonable concern to avoid pollution and preserve our natural resources in a responsible manner is a commendable ethical position. We should always take care of the environment, be responsible for its protection and, at the same time, help the poor.

However, ‘environmentalist’ efforts to cut carbon emissions make energy less affordable and accessible, which drives up the costs of consumer products, stifles economic growth, costs jobs, and imposes harmful effects on the Earth’s poorest people. By contrast, allocating monetary resources to help build sewage treatment plants, enhance sanitation, and provide clean water for poor people would have a greater immediate impact on their plight than would the battle over the vague concept of ‘global warming.’

At the core of climate-change extremists’ beliefs are two main tenets: That humans can control the weather and that humans will bring about the end of the world if they disrespect nature. This sounds like religious scripture, and, while environmentalists will readily provide scientific research to back up their statements, rarely will they tolerate counter-arguments – such as when someone points out that none of their apocalyptic predictions have come true so far.

According to Australia’s Senator James Paterson,

“The public shaming and bullying of any scientist who differs from climate change orthodoxy is eerily reminiscent of a latter-day Salem Witch-trial or Spanish Inquisition, with public floggings meted out – metaphorically speaking – for their thought crimes. Indeed, ‘dissenters,’ as they have also been labelled, suffer ritual humiliation at the hands of their colleagues and the media, with their every motivation questioned and views pilloried.”

When the temperature rises, we hear, ‘Wow, that’s clear evidence of climate change.’ But when there’s a rapid cooling, we hear, ‘Wow, that’s more proof of climate change.’According to Jonah Goldberg, the founding editor of National Review Online, “The beauty about global warming is that it touches everything we do – what we eat, what we wear, where we go. Our ‘carbon footprint’ is the measure of man.”

In other words, the idea of “climate change” is essentially irrefutable because, somewhere, in some way, the climate is constantly changing. This irrefutability makes it a perfect basis for a religious belief. And this faith, in turn, makes people into “necessitous” men and women. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who served as US president from March 1933 to April 1945, once contended that human beings in an age of scarcity will find themselves pressed by something he called “necessity.” Life requires the satisfaction of necessities like food, clothes, and shelter. Hence, Roosevelt insisted that “necessitous men are not free men” and that the state should be able to make people “free from fear.”

James Tonkowich from the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, DC, explains that there is a long history of environmentalist thinking that sees humans primarily as consumers and polluters. “That thinking leads many to insist that abortion rights are integral to any environmental agenda,” he says. Forgoing children and even having an abortion is thereby promoted by the ‘greenie elites’ in the so-called ‘Western democracies’ as environmentally friendly, while childless women are doing their bit to reduce the carbon footprint of civilisation.

Tragically, not only are the young generations being fooled into forgoing children due to the fear of endangering the planet, but they are also terminating their healthy pregnancies, with some going so far as to openly claim that it was done in the service of climate goals. A married woman once told a newspaper that “not having a child is the most environmentally friendly thing she could do.” The same article reports another woman who terminated her pregnancy in the firm belief that:

“Having children is selfish … Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees, and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.”

Of course, concerns about overpopulation are not new. In 1968, ecologist Paul Ehrlich echoed 18th-century economist Thomas Malthus when he predicted worldwide famine due to overpopulation and advocated immediate action to limit population growth. Ehrlich’s ‘The Population Bomb’ was one of the most influential books of the last century. “Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come,” he said in a prophetic tone more than 50 years ago.

Needless to say, that prophecy never came true. Despite all the worry, access to food and resources increased as the global population rose.

Obviously, this has not stopped some environmental activists from continuing to make similarly bizarre statements about humanity and the future of our planet. Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh, wrote in 1986: “I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus” as a way to do something about human overpopulation.

We should be deeply suspicious of any argument that employs language that refers to humans as an “invasive virus,” a “plague,” or even a “problem” that needs to be resolved. This is an argument that betrays a desire to bring death at a large scale, to eliminate human beings in search of some utopian small number of sustainable survivors.

Nevertheless, some environmentalists even lament that neither war nor famine are capable of reducing the population enough and prefer the arrival of a deadly virus to prey on the innocent. We have come to the point that even a new human life is seen as a threat to the environment, where some candidly contend that new babies represent an undesirable source of greenhouse emissions and consumers of natural resources.

This is why these insidious aspects of the environmentalist cult must be exposed and challenged.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT/(neither of The DEFENDER)

*Augusto Zimmermann, Professor and Head of Law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education in Australia, President of WALTA – Legal Theory Association, and former Law Reform Commissioner in Western Australia