Critics of global warming hysteria have noted that the movement often appears to have a religious feel. But now, a Guardian columnist makes the approach explicit. From, “If We Are to Cope With Climate Change We Need a New Moral Order,” by Andrew Brown:
It’s important to this argument to understand that religious resources need not be theistic. All they need do is make manifest a higher rationality than self-interest. This isn’t an argument about whether God exists, but about how human beings make up their minds and form their characters...
What religious thought – and ritual – can supply is the two things absent from normative consumer liberalism. The first is a belief that the choice between ends is not arbitrary or wholly personal: that there are moral facts of the matter; that saving as much of humanity as possible is an obligation on all of us, and that this is actually true, and not just a matter of preference.
The second is the kind of conformism, reinforced by all kinds of social ritual, large and small, which will enforce the social discipline needed to carry societies through some pretty ghastly changes. Let’s face it, any adjustment to an ecologically sustainable standard of living is going to be a lot nastier than anything Greece is going through now. It will need considerable determination and solidarity.
Good grief. You think the economy stinks now? Wait until these hysterics get ahold of things! That which seeks to interfere with human thriving is anti human, so I’ll just keep the current moral order, thank you very much.
Give me that old time Global Warming Hysteria/Give me that old time Global Warming Hysteria/Give me that old time Global Warming Hysteria/ It’s good enough for me!
