Is Religion for or Against Climate Change?

Over the past couple weeks, climate change denialism has heated up, thanks in large part to record snow and an IPCC scandal. A prominent undercurrent to the attacks? Religion.

To wit, one New Jersey newspaper featured an op-ed, in response to snowpocalyse, that claimed: "Global warming is ... the latest incarnation of environmentalism as an alternate religion."

The title of a blog about the IPCC: "Doomsday-cult of global warming exposed as biggest false religion since Scientology."

A comment on an Economist post about the IPCC: "Temperatures change, water rises, water falls, the sky is blue, the grass is green. and keep your Gaia religion away from me."

Portraying the belief in climate change as something occult is nothing new. Since global warming first reached public consciousness, a segment of religious fundamentalists have portrayed it as pagan and opposed to true divinity. The implication is that climate change belief is based on blind faith rather than real evidence — a patently false supposition.

While this way of looking at things exists, for the most part, well outside the mainstream, it can have a real impact on what people believe about the environment — and how they choose to care for it. This is especially true when religious politicians use this idea to vote against important action, and to influence their (also mostly religious) constituents. Legendary global warming denier James Inhofe has argued on the Senate floor that "man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith." And last March, Rep. John Shimkus (R.-Ill.) said at a Congressional hearing that anything climate-related was God's will — so trying to fight against it was heathenistic.

It's important, then, to support the alternative theist viewpoint: That caring for the environment is an important tenet of religious belief.

There are plenty who embrace this idea. When several religious leaders attended Copenhagen last year, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon noted they could have the "largest, widest and deepest reach" of influence on the outcome of the summit. And there are numerous religious green groups, like The National Religious Partnership for the Environment and Target Earth, an eco mission program that combines a "desire to share the love of Jesus while caring for the earth and the people who inhabit it."

One thing religous environmental warriors have to back them up? Biblical truth. The Good Book is full of verses about man's responsibility to take care of the land and its creatures. There's a whole compilation here. But this one sums it up nicely:

Genesis 1:26 - Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'

Photo credit: Photocapy