Dr. Jay Lehr and Burt Prelutsky
PA Pundits
It is a phenomenon of modern life that as membership in the old established religions wane, cults continue to sprout up like toadstools. Most of them have a very limited number of adherents and unless 75 people are killed at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, or 900 are killed or commit suicide at Jonestown, Guyana, we don’t hear about cult leaders like David Koresh or Jim Jones.
Occasionally, a smaller cult manages to make the news when they commit mass suicide in order to board a spaceship that will take them to Cloud Cuckooland.
But when it comes to sheer numbers and influence, there’s nothing to match the doomsday cult that has sprung up in the wake of Al Gore’s warning us about the imminent threat of global extinction. What makes the longevity of this cult so remarkable is that Gore’s “imminent” has turned into “eventual” and none of the true believers is questioning the ever-changing timetable. The cause of addressing climate change has become the modern world’s version of a secular religion.
There has long been a church of environmentalism having many of the characteristics of its ecclesiastical forerunners. One of course is the apocalypse that will consume us all if we do not follow the rules. The rules involve making penance for our original sin of unleashing the earth’s carbon dioxide emitting fuels from the Earth’s crust, and more recent transgressions involving plastic straws and cross country airline flights. But repentance is near. Salvation lies in eliminating our “carbon footprint”, using reusable shopping bags, and supporting MacDonald’ new meatless hamburgers.
The folks who espouse the climate change gospel know little more about the science of climatology and the greenhouse effect, than the average medieval villager knew why crops may fail or the sun and moon become eclipsed. And in complete symmetry of past religions, children are being used as effective role models in propagating faith. Millions left school to urge adults to battle this modern scourge, or perhaps they just enjoyed a day off school to speak the lines they were taught.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on September 21, 2019, Gerald Baker wrote:”the testimony of a guileless child is a powerful weapon against skepticism.” Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg has become the poster child for the religious fervour among climate change activists growing fanaticism.
Recently, A O-C and a few of the dimwits running for the Democratic nomination warned us that 2030 is absolutely the last day that this planet will be able to sustain human life. We bet confidently that by 2025, they’ll move the deadline to 2040.
Even Gore was something of a late bloomer. Starting around 1974, all the experts at the U.N., NASA, the New York Times, the AP, Time and Newsweek, were warning us of a coming Ice Age or fretting about a disappearing ozone layer or something really scary-sounding they called acid rain.
But, then, almost overnight, they regrouped and started keeping us up nights by screaming that the planet was in immediate danger of being incinerated.
When neither of those calamitous changes in the weather took place, the same folks decided to settle for a changing climate. The fact that they never explained what would be so terrible about things cooling down a little in the San Fernando Valley in California in July or warming up a bit in Fargo North Dakota in December should tell people all they really need to know about these cheap hustlers, who are in it for money, power and attention
Gore warned of melting icebergs and rising ocean levels, which simply proved that he didn’t even remember his high school science. If you fill a glass with water and ice to the very top, when the ice melts, not a drop of water will rise above the rim.
It’s now twenty years later, the ice at the North Pole and South Poles haven’t vanished. If anything, they have expanded. As has Al Gore, if you’ve seen him lately.
Republished with permission from PA Pundits – International
