Treading on thin, climate-controlled ice

  • I love the Ortho­dox Church, but some­times when I read edi­to­ri­als and procla­ma­tions that come from the high­est lev­els, I want to scream.

    Case in point: This edi­to­r­ial in today’s Wall St. Jour­nal writ­ten by the Greek Patri­arch. Titled “Our Indi­vis­i­ble Envi­ron­ment,” the piece speaks of the Ortho­dox Church’s com­mit­ment to envi­ron­men­tal issues, not­ing that last week, the Church orga­nized a sym­po­sium of sci­en­tists, the­olo­gians, politi­cians and envi­ron­men­tal­ists. And the arti­cle goes on to do a fair job of mar­ket­ing the Church’s inter­est and involvement:

    What does pre­serv­ing the planet have to do with sav­ing the soul?

    A lot, as it turns out. For if life is sacred, so is the entire web that sus­tains it. Some of those con­nec­tions — the effects of over­har­vest­ing on the fish pop­u­la­tions of the North Atlantic, for exam­ple — we under­stand very well. Oth­ers, such as the long-term health impacts of indus­tri­al­iza­tion, we under­stand less well.

    That all sounds right, but as I kept read­ing, I had a grow­ing sense of dread. “Yes, but …” I kept think­ing. “Yes, but the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment isn’t just about the envi­ron­ment any more. It takes the excuse of the envi­ron­ment to pro­pound a cer­tain ide­ol­ogy, so that sud­denly even the weather is somebody’s fault. Surely we all get that.”

    And then, near the end, the round­house kick: “The Obama Admin­is­tra­tion has com­mit­ted the United States to a 50% reduc­tion in green­house gases by the year 2050. And there are grow­ing expec­ta­tions that mean­ing­ful progress can be made in the United Nations Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence sched­uled to take place in Copen­hagen this Decem­ber.”

    I had just been read­ing about that upcom­ing con­fer­ence on Roger Kimball’s blog — HERE. This “mean­ing­ful progress” takes the form of a treaty that guar­an­tees that the “rich coun­tries” — mostly the U.S., of course — would pay devel­op­ing coun­tries “at least $160 bil­lion” (with a ‘b’) for four years. Why? Well, to assuage our guilt for being a rich coun­try, of course. To com­pen­sate the under­priv­i­leged nations of the world, and to take another swing at that pesky redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth notion that just HAS to be the way out of all the world’s prob­lems, if we can just get the hang of it.

    And the whole thing will be super­vised by some­thing that seems sus­pi­ciously like an appointed — not elected — world gov­ern­ment, under the spe­cial care of the U. N. Because when you think ‘respon­si­ble,’ you have to think ‘U. N.,’ right? (Heck, why not? They did such a bang-up job of the Oil-for-Food Pro­gramme.)

    The whole thing stinks to high heaven. It stinks worse than the fish pop­u­la­tions of the North Atlantic that we’re over­har­vest­ing. British con­ser­v­a­tive Lord Mon­ck­ton had this to say about the upcom­ing con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen and the agenda for which it stands:

    So, thank you, Amer­ica. You were the bea­con of free­dom for the world. It is a priv­i­lege merely to stand on this soil of free­dom while it is still free. But in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your pres­i­dent will sign your free­dom, your democ­racy, and your pros­per­ity away for­ever. And nei­ther you nor any sub­se­quent gov­ern­ment you may elect will have any power what­so­ever to take it back again.

    Is that alarmist hyper­bole? Mmm­m­maybe. Chances are, the left wing envi­ron­men­tal­ists won’t get every­thing they want in Copen­hagen. I think even the com­plete wackos have noticed that when America’s econ­omy goes down the toi­let, every­one else’s tends to fol­low, no mat­ter how smelly our car­bon foot­print is.

    So I don’t think I believe that we’re sunk yet. But my ques­tion is why I have to worry that my beloved Ortho­dox Church will keep send­ing out sig­nals that sound like bless­ings on all of this?

    The patriarch’s edi­to­r­ial aims at a great uni­ver­sal­ity in this, with a tip of the hat to Gala­tians 3:28: “The mol­e­cules of water that com­prise the great North Atlantic are nei­ther Euro­pean nor Amer­i­can. The par­ti­cles of atmos­phere above the United King­dom are nei­ther Labour nor Tory. … The nat­ural envi­ron­ment unites us in ways that tran­scend doc­tri­nal differences.”

    That’s true. But the hyper-politicized air of the upcom­ing U. N. con­fer­ence does NOT tran­scend dif­fer­ences, nor does it wish to; it exac­er­bates them. It is as toxic a sub­stance as any that the world’s cul­ture has ever spouted. And by not at least acknowl­edg­ing the prob­lem with the cur­rent envi­ron­men­tal­ist move­ment, I humbly sug­gest that His Holi­ness is mak­ing a ter­ri­ble mis­take, and doing an injus­tice to the many Ortho­dox who don’t agree with him.


    Related posts:

    1. Cra­dle and con­vert Orthodox
    2. Ice storms
    3. Is Ortho­dox con­ver­sion on the rise?
    4. Now play­ing at a denom­i­na­tion near you
    5. The Ortho­dox prob­lem in Jerusalem

    October 28th, 2009 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 10.28.2009

    Hear, hear!

  • Grace

    So I’m not the only one who thinks this? Thank goodness!

    (After I wrote this, I was really ner­vous about hit­ting that Pub­lish but­ton. Who the heck do I think I am, any­way? Oh well. If you can’t get into big trou­ble on your blog, what good is it, right?)

  • DebD

    No, you are not the only one who thinks this. Although, some of us are less well-informed that you are. I really dis­like it when reli­gious lead­ers get involved in world pol­i­tics in this manner.

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