‘Global Warming’ Is The Perfect Cause For Our Self-Centered Times
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife
The Copenhagen Conference on Climate Catastrophe (!) is now reaching its crescendo. (Many thanks to True/Slant’s Jeff McMahon for his exhaustive on-the-scene reporting from the confab.) President Obama is now on his way to the Danish capital, and, increasingly, it appears as though the US and China are going to hammer out a deal. It is an appropriate time, therefore, to take stock of the conference, and, more broadly, to consider what the prominence of “global warming” as an issue says about our current cultural climate.
‘Global warming’ is the perfect cause for today’s post-Christian, self-centered times.
As I argued in this space yesterday, the premise that climate activists operate under is a profoundly anthropocentric one: that is, that man makes the weather. This premise is a repudiation of thousands of years of human history, both in terms of man’s lived experience, and in the way our species has viewed its role in the universe. In the classical epoch, man was thought to be subject to the whims of a group of highly irascible and ill-tempered gods. All too often, those whims were manifested in terms of weather. In the Christian era, man was further humbled by the belief in an omnipotent, omnipresent God. Yet, in today’s post-Christian era, man has anointed himself master of nature. Post-Christian Copenhagen – in addition to being lovely in its own right – therefore, could not have been a more fitting location for the confab. (Pity about the weather, though.)
The worries regarding the effects of climate change are also profoundly self-centered. The Danish protestors that McMahon has written about are an instructive case-in-point. The demands that the protestors make revolve around fears about what global warming is going to do to them. Wealthy Dutch, Danish, and coastal Americans fret about losing their beachfront properties to a rising sea. Intriguingly, McMahon has suggested at least a tactical similarity between the 1968 student riots and the current climate protestors. Substantively, the parallel is quite plainly false: the ‘68ers were altruistic protesters. They were protesting war, civil rights violations, and poverty. They were attempting to build a social democracy; they were trying to better the lives of others. Today’s climate protestors are profoundly self-centered: it is their land that they are concerned about, their beachfront views.
Despite the claims of environmentalists, fears about global warming really aren’t about the planet at all. They’re about us.
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I enjoyed your post. “Climate change” (fomerly known as global warming) has become the new religion of the post-Christian America and Europe. It allows its followers to participate in the emotions and false affectations of religion without having to tackle any of the difficult personal challenges of Christianity such as love thy neighbor; love your enemies; selflessness; feed the poor; care for the sick and helpless; giving up worldly possessions ; etc. In that sense, it’s the perfect religion for the self-centered, narcissitic consumer.
Patrick Moore, one of the 5 co-founders of Greenpeace recently commented (I’m paraphrasing) that if we REALLY want to help the environment we should end poverty through industrial development. (I can send you a link if you want to read the interview.) Poverty and human suffering are the real problems in a selfless, pre-post-Christian society.
Again, I enjoyed your post.
Mathew
Let me start for a moment with the idea that your premise – concern about global climate change is ‘post-Christian’ – is true. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with assuming that the actions of humans have an effect on weather patterns?
Personally, I’m not that concerned with things like sea level rise flooding the eastern seaboard and making Tuvalu disappear. I do worry that small shifts in climate systems caused by human activity could create stronger storm systems, cause infectious diseases to migrate to new parts of the world, destabilize agricultural productivity, and maybe even hurt some non-human animals who are sensitive to shifts in climate.
What’s wrong with me believing that?
Anyways, I don’t really buy your premise – I think there are many religious people who believe that we should limit our emissions of greenhouse gases. There’s nothing post-Christian about it. There are also a lot of people who never have been and never will be Christians who believe that the world would be better with an energy economy that was less reliant on coal, oil, and gas. In the case of the Chinese, they don’t have the same priorities as Americans and Europeans, but they will happily manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, and other technologies we may deploy to fuel our economies if the demand exists for them.