Now, there is nothing wrong, and a lot right, with the human instinct to try to understand man within a larger transcendental context. The arrogant and monstrously dilated individual human ego is the direct cause of much of mankind's suffering throughout our benighted existence.
And while I have my own religious thoughts, I will not disdain any man's search for the transcendent. But a religion should be understood by both its adherents and others for what it is -- a religion. The trouble with global warming believers is that probably most of them delude themselves into thinking they are practicing science -- not religion.
And yet, the signs of religiousness are readily to be seen. Al Gore and his Hollywood coterie have almost comically manifested one aspect of their new religion in the last few weeks -- the sense of sin and the search for remission of such sin.
At the Academy Awards last month, their spokesman proudly announced that this year's show was "the first green Oscars." These vast consumers of energy -- in their 30,000-sqare-foot houses, their Gulfstream jets and even in their high-energy consumption film production process -- claimed green remission of sin by virtue of driving the last hundred yards to the Kodak Theatre in Priuses and by buying carbon credits.
Likewise, when Al Gore was revealed to be using high quantities of energy to heat and cool his large home, he claimed it was OK because he had purchased carbon offset credits. Substantively, these offsets are of dubious environmental value (see Daily Telegraph article: "Is Carbon Offsetting a Con"; BBC's "U.K. to Tackle Bogus Carbon Schemes"; Wall St. Journal's "The Political and Business Self-interest Behind Carbon Limits.")
But as, what the Catholic Church calls "indulgentia a culpa et a poena" (release from guilt and from punishment), paying carbon offset fees makes perfect religious sense. The Christian sinner pays the church for "a remission of the temporal punishment due, in God's justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the church in the exercise of the powers of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive." (Catholic Encyclopedia)
In the animistic church, any using or changing of the physical world (such as burning carbon) is a sin against the sacred, holistic, living world (the Gaia hypothesis). But as everyone uses energy (just as every Christian sins), the neo-animist church, too, must provide for a remission of sin (and also, a handy source of profit for the carbon-offset company owners -- such as Al Gore who, according to news reports, pays his indulgences to Generation Investment Management, of which he is the chairman.)
In the neo-animist church of global warming -- as in all religions -- the truth is acquired by faith -- not science. And as in all religions, the faithful should be on guard for charlatans.
Tony Blankley
Tony Blankley, a conservative author and commentator who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during the 1990s, when Republicans took control of Congress, died Sunday January 8, 2012. He was 63.
Blankley, who had been suffering from stomach cancer, died Saturday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, his wife, Lynda Davis, said Sunday.
In his long career as a political operative and pundit, his most visible role was as a spokesman for and adviser to Gingrich from 1990 to 1997. Gingrich became House Speaker when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 1994 midterm elections.
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