A New Religion

Last night I watched An Inconvenient Truth*. Any regular readers will know I am a little cynical about global warming and the environmental movement, but I wanted to watch Gore's film to see if he could persuade me. After all, he was the Vice-President of the most prosperous and one of the most advanced countries in the world, so surely he would have access to a lot of research and a lot of information that I, working as an HR bod in Central London, just don't have.

Let's just say he didn't win me over. Sure, there were lots of graphs showing dramatic increases in, what I shall scientifically call, "stuff", but he failed to explain exactly what his graphs and pictures meant or exactly what his timescales were. And at the risk of being an intellectual snob, a truly good researcher does not cite his or her sources as "my friend". And the moments when Gore got really passionate were the moments when he was talking not about the environment, but rather himself. There may well be a case out there, somewhere, that will convince me about global warming, and the threat it poses to us all. But it most certainly wasn't An Inconvenient Truth.

But it did get me thinking. There was one moment** when Al Gore spoke about his son being involved in a car accident and ending up in a critical condition in hospital. He spoke about how it changed his life, and how it made him devote his energies to the environmental cause. How it made him realise that he would have to fight to save the planet, because what he took for granted may not be there tomorrow. Ho-hum. But perhaps that is the main motivating factor for many of those passionate about environmentalism. It is a chance to convince yourself that you have found the truth about the future, and found a way to save yourself and your fellow humans. You can spread the word, and save the world. You have the key to salvation!

Which, when you put it like that, sounds not unlike evangelical Christianity.

Now I'm not saying that everyone who is interested in environmentalism, or everyone who pays lip service to the environmental cause***, is like an evangelical Christian. Far from it. But those like Gore, those who refuse to enter into a debate**** about the absolute truth of global warming, and are passionate about spreading the word across the world and changing the way people live their lives in relations to that absolute truth, display the absolute conviction in their belief that I have only really seen before in evangelical Christians. And whilst there is probably more scientific fact in global warming than in the highly unlikely story of a carpenter's son who could turn water into wine and rose from the dead, I still don't see the concept of global warming and the supposed implications of that global warming as absolute fact. So you could argue that the evangelical environmentalists are acting on faith rather than fact.

Which actually helps me to understand the environmentalist mindset. It must be very comforting to have discovered an absolute truth, and then be able to think that they have a way to save the world, and the unbelievers. I almost wish I could have a belief like that. But unfortunately the cynic in me demands (the most probably unachievable) proof before I can have that faith.

And the case for global warming could be made much more convincing if the zealous evangelists in that movement managed to put their faith to one side at the moment, and took on the sceptics in an intelligent, reasoned and sensible debate. But the problem is that their absolute conviction in the scientific "facts" behind their movement resembles faith and therefore stifles debate. As soon as someone has "faith", it becomes very difficult for them to accept argument against those fundamental beliefs.

*I also watched Demons. Which was cheesy, poorly scripted and gleefully anti-intellectual. But since it had zombies vomiting green poster
paint, it was a lot more fun that An Inconvenient Truth.
**Actually, more than a moment. At least five minutes. Which in a 91 minute film is quite a substantial amount of time.
***Such as recycling rubbish.
****And there is no acknowledgement in An Inconvenient Truth that there is any real opposition to the global warming movement other than the occasional arch reference to the "so-called sceptics".