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Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Reader "Pops" has sent me a pointer (via Instapundit, apparently) to this Michael Crichton speech focussing on some of the dangerous parallels between environmentalism and religion. When any belief system becomes an orthodoxy, it's time to step back and re-examine our beliefs. So Crichton calls for a re-examination of a variety of issues, from DDT, to forest management and global warming. What we need are policies and decisions based on reason and fact, not feel good posing. I've posted on DDT here previously here, here and here.

...Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them...


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