"There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe." - Michael Crighton at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club last year.
Before I get into today's blog entry, let me start off by saying that personally I have no problem with Bush's environmental policies. Although he is routinely bashed on this issue, and I feel no particular urge to start drilling in ANWR, I find that, on the whole, his environmental policies are quite defensible. "I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land," Bush mused dreamily during one of the debates. I won't go that far, but my major beef has been over Iraq, and the Patriot Act, and the deficit, and "faith-based initiatives," and the whole gay marriage thing. I can go on, but, sorry, my list doesn't include the environment.
It's not that I don't care about the environment - I'm an environmentalist, and I've been making a living at it for over 20 years. It's just that I think his environmental policies aren't as bad as the popular press has led the public to believe. His policies aren't perfect, and I can quibble over this and that, but my disagreements are no more than I had with either Clinton or Bush, Sr.
Today, I came back from a meeting of environmental managers for chemical-manufacturing facilities. The meeting was held in central Georgia, far from the urban atheists of Atlanta, at a fairly pleasant golf course/resort on a lake. At the meeting, I was surprised to see how far my politics have drifted toward the left. Maybe I'm just a non-conformist, but after eight years of Clinton in the White House, my political inclinations were never further to the right. However, four years of the Bush Administration have subsequently pushed me pretty far back toward the left. As I mingled with the environmental managers, rural Republicans all, I realized just how much I've changed since the invasion of Iraq, and how different I've become from my so-called colleagues.
First of all, not unexpectedly, the meeting included a lot of statements about how lucky we were to finally have Republican control of both the House and Seante, both at the State and Federal level, as well as a Republican Governor and a Republican President. Okay, that wasn't unexpected, but I was surprised at how much it stung. But beyond that, I kept hearing denials of scientific fact on environmental issues, statements like most air pollution is caused by natural pollen and not by man, that ozone depletion is a myth, that PCBs have never been proven to be toxic, and that there is no evidence of global warming. I listened to all of this without arguing - after all, my company sent me to this meeting to market, not to see how many people I could piss off.
Over dinner, someone tried to explain to me that global warming should not even be considered a problem. His reasons included the usual misunderstandings about global temperature fluctuations, although he really got my interest when he asked, "You know how, back in the Bible, people used to live for so long? Like Methuselah living to 900 years?"
"Ummm, yeah," I replied.
"Well, when you think about why that was, you've got to consider Noah's flood. For it to have rained 40 days and 40 nights, there must have been a lot, and I mean A LOT, of water up in the atmosphere beforehand."
I was wondering where this was going, too.
"Well, for that much humidity to remain in suspension, the atmosphere had to have been a lot warmer back then. After all, cold air doesn't retain nearly as much moisture as warm air, right? So, before the flood, it had to have been a lot warmer than it is now, and at that time, people were living a lot longer that they do today. So maybe global warming's not such a bad thing after all. Maybe it's a blessing from the Lord to increase and enrich our lives, and has nothing whatsoever to do with greenhouse gases."
Now, you may be thinking that he was pulling my leg or trying to get a reaction out of me, but I swear all this was said with a straight face. Worse yet, the sermon was starting to attract a crowd, most of whom nodded in approval and agreement.
Now, here in the atheistic urban jungle, professionals do not discuss religion, or faith-based opinions, at business meetings. Sure, you might hear someone mention that he or she attends such-and-such church, or statements that one's business ethics reflect their "Christian values," but certainly not anything like this. However, I fear that our President's faith-based style is encouraging his more rural followers to express any fool thing that pops into their head. Who knows, maybe it's the Lord telling them to speak?
If urban atheists embrace environmentalism as a substitute for traditional Judeo-Christian values as Crighton suggests, then rural believers have no need to make such a substitution and reject environmentalism. At some level, environmentalism might even be considered a challenge to their faith. So now we're moving toward a country of urban environmentalists with no need for religion and rural fundamentalists with no need for environmentalism. If you've got Jesus, why do you need John Muir?
Dinner was served, salmon and steak, and as he dug in my new friend wondered aloud if the salmon might not contain too much mercury, in a mocking tone that implied that only a damn fool would think that fish bio-accumulate toxins like mercury. This was all getting to be a bit too much for me. After eating, I excused myself, wished everyone a good night, and went off to my semi-comfortable room for the night, feeling like more of an alien than I have since my craft first landed on this planet.
The rhetoric seemed a little less pronounced this morning, maybe because everyone was just too tired, or maybe because I was simply numb. The meeting was over by lunch, and I headed home to be back among the urban athiests of Atlanta.
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