Barry Dauphin comments along familiar lines at YARGB.

Virtually all of the features of Christianity which the rational and enlightened portion of mankind find objectionable survive perfectly happily in modern secular environmentalist leftism. Is there any real difference between the flagellant penitents of the Middle Ages and members of today’s militant chorus of greens? Both believed the imminent destruction of the world was at hand, and that it had been provoked by mankind’s instigation of divine wrath via excessive materialism and pursuit of pleasure. The only possibility, then or now, of averting ultimate catastrophe would be a vigorous program of repentance featuring a solid dose of self-inflicted pain and suffering. The key difference is that the medievals used wooden switches while the moderns prefer regulations and taxation.

Global warming gives a variety of people the way to “make nice” with each other. We can join hands and save the planet. Even scientists decide the issue by “consensus” rather than by thorough, accurate, appropriately cautious data collection, including challenges to the data collection and interpretation as is expected from any discipline that presumes to take the falsification principle seriously. By agreeing it’s the “big” problem, we are to put aside our differences. “Skeptics” are to be treated with derision. The question is said to be “settled” (there we can all agree about that). The remaining questions involve what to “do” about it. And most of the solutions appear to be either quasi-socialism or outright socialism, again to make level, to obliterate differences. There are to be no differences, no competition. We are to all agree.

AGW offers modern people and modern societies a secular sacrament. It is a New Penance: Forgive me, Gaia, for I have sinned. It’s been 5 yrs. since my last recycling. Instead of saying the rosary or davening, we can chant “sustainability” and become pure again. And now virtually everyone is getting in to the act. Even ChimpyMcBushitler is on board, although new religions may seek new sacrificial lambs. We will be told that it is the evil market system, which creates this problem. And that will lead to being told it is the individual’s pursuit of self-interest that lay at the heart of the warming- even life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may come to be seen as culprits, if they haven’t already been. Top-down enforced social cooperation will save us from ourselves. A new god would be born, until…. Well, that wouldn’t really be paradise, and even the true believers would find that out at some point. But they could wreak a lot of hell in the meantime.