Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
Yesterday I debated the Conservative-led Coalition's disastrous climate policy with junior environment minister Lord Marland. The audience was divided roughly 50/50 between people like me who believed that Britain's energy and environment policy should be based on facts and empirical observations rather than junk science; and those who believed from the bottom of their hearts that as much taxpayers' money as possible should be sacrificed on the altar of Mother Gaia. This is where the climate debate is these days: rationalism v superstition. If so much money weren't depending on it it would be almost funny.
One thing struck me about the questions I had to field afterwards from the True Believers. Every one of them prefaced his or her question with the words: "I don't know much about science/sea levels/geology/economics..." Almost as if their ignorance of the subject they felt so very, very strongly about was a virtue.
I asked one of my questioners who was concerned about rising sea levels: "Do you actually KNOW how much sea levels are rising by on average, per year?" Of course he didn't. So I told him: no more than 1.8 mm per year – as has been the case for several hundred years.
This fact didn't faze him one bit. Facts never do with these people. Environmentalism has long since abandoned all links with evidence or reality. It's about religious faith, pure and simple.
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Dec '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
Question by question, James!
Apr '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
In a similar situation, I was listening to the radio a little over eleven years ago while I was driving to my office in Minneapolis. The morning show was interviewing a representative from PETA about some environmental-related issue. At one point, one of the frustrated hosts asked her where she got her scientific data from. Her response:
They laughed her off the radio show. A few minutes later, another member called to inform them that they could expect a lawsuit. They laughed him off the show as well.
Seems things haven't changed much in the last eleven years.
Mar '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
It says a lot about the present "Conservative" government in the UK that:
1. Mr Cameron gets on so well with Mr Obama, and calls himself a "liberal conservative"
2. Lord Monckton is not advising 'em (he was, of course, an adviser to Mrs Thatcher).
Edited on March 14, 2012 at 10:39pmFeb '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
James, please do a Radio Delingpole interview with Lord Monckton.
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
@No Caesar. Your wish is my command! (Though I quite fancy doing another Toby Young one soon, too)
Feb '12
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
Global warming- it's just another joke
As Steyn calls it 'The First church of the Science is in.'
Even way out philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend of the nasty old Frankfurt school would find some this climate stuff way out there, even for him.. 'Far round the bend' as he used to be called.. and so is Climate science. In science nothing is ever really settled.
Apr '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
Wait you're telling me that Al Gore, Hollywood, and a horde of public school teachers are wrong, that their is no science behind the man-made global warming/climate change charge, and no scientific consensus. Weird?
Jan '12
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
got that right James.
A Misanthropic, Malthusian Religion
a death cult.
Jan '12
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
From one of my personal blog posts...
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
James, it will always be as if the Enlightenment has not happened. Romanticism (which is to say, Christianity without a god) is the doppelgaenger of the Enlightenment. You cannot embrace the latter without begetting the former.
With global warming, you are not up against science. You are up against a secular religion.
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
@paul a Rahe Yep: I know had I met them in real life I would have LOATHED those liberal poseurs French revolutionary apologists Wordsworth and Coleridge....
Aug '10
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
Is it possible that the Enlightenment and Romanticism are even closer than twins or mother and daughter? The French Revolution believed its Cult of Reason (then Supreme Being) to be pure Enlightenment when it was really just the silliest form of Romanticism. Oddly enough, that makes Gaia worship just like the Enlightenment happened.
Perhaps it's impossible for human nature to avoid romanticizing something, even a supposedly Enlightenment mindset.
Edited on March 14, 2012 at 11:37pmMar '12
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
It's the trend among lefties now: having discarded God, religion and tradition, they've also discarded most of the standards for what used to make one a good person.
And people can't really function without some kind of moral standard and way to grow into a better person. It's part of our nature.
So now, instead of being a good person because you are caring for your aging mother in law who isn't a very nice person or because you have taken on the task of turning tiny human infants into decent members of society, you're a good person because you lobby for legislation and buy green products. And shopping and petitioning your way to morality is a lot easier than being a good wife, mother and daughter day after day.
Edited on March 14, 2012 at 11:46pmFeb '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
"So I told him: no more than 1.8 mm per year - as has been the case for several hundred years."
"This fact didn't faze him one bit. "
Unlikely to have any conception of what 1.8 mm per year means. A half meter in three centuries is still quite a lot though not something we will have to deal with.
May '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
I quite agree with your assessment of environmentalism. However, contrasting "evidence or reality" with "religious faith, pure and simple" seems to reflect the common misconception that religious faith is about believing in something apart from or even in spite of evidence to the contrary.
I would maintain that the Christian religious faith is the worldview that best fits the evidence and reflects reality. I would reject the contemporary environmentalist movement not because it is, as you correctly point out, religious, but because it is idolatry, a foolish and irrational worship of the creature rather than the Creator.
But aside from that little quibble, I greatly appreciated your post. Thanks, James, for continuing to hold the line against the false prophets of global warming!
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
Is it possible that the Enlightenment and Romanticism are even closer than twins or mother and daughter? The French Revolution believed its Cult of Reason (then Supreme Being) to be pure Enlightenment when it was really just the silliest form of Romanticism. Oddly enough, that makes Gaia worshipjust likethe Enlightenment happened.
Perhaps it's impossible for human nature to avoid romanticizing something, even a supposedly Enlightenment mindset. · 33 minutes ago
Edited 29 minutes ago
Is it Chesterton who said, "If you do not believe in God, you will believe in anything."
Feb '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
Gaia-worship is not the only mystical aspect of the "progressive" worldview. Many of them also believe in magical crystals, and, of course, astrology.
In The Screwtape Letters, C S Lewis's devil hoped for the coming of "the materialist magician." I think he's here.
Dec '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
Mr. Delingpole... did anyone by some chance happen to record or video the debate? If not, have you considered doing so yourself?..... assuming that there's not some kind of privacy law or something it would violate.
Apr '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
If you're a good environmentalist, believe in Mother Earth, it's not required to meet old fashioned concepts of good; you can abandon five children to orphanages, leave someone underwater while you go home and sleep it off, you can call people vile evil things, it doesn't matter.
Dec '11
Re: Gaia Worship: Like the Enlightenment Never Happened
1.8mm per year for several hundred years is evidence that the change in sea levels is not the result of industrialization. It may amount to a lot over 3 centuries, but mankind is unable to alter that trajectory. We can neither speed it up nor slow it down.We can, howver, adapt if we use all of our resources wisely.