THE MISSING SCIENCE OF IAN PLIMER
Helmer’s attempt to restrict the Judaeo-Christian tradition to matters of the spirit can be compared with the way that another climate change denier Ian Plimer condemns environmentalists as pagans and communists. Plimer is concerned to defend the Judaeo-Christian tradition against the atheistic hordes of new barbarians bereft of spiritual values. Plimer’s Heaven and Earth promises to give us the ‘missing science’ on global warming. The book is heavy on bluster and very, very thin on relevant science (2009). There are 2311 footnotes in the book, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that Plimer’s case is supported by a wealth of evidence. What counts in favour of an argument is the strength of the evidence, not the number of citations. For the record, Plimer’s case for volcanic eruptions as the cause of climate change has been examined many times and has always been found wanting. He can have a million footnotes if he likes. The evidence is still against his theory of volcanic eruptions.
Plimer claims that ‘the environmental romantics’ ‘seek to return to the past and promote pagan superstitions.’ Plimer also quotes Patrick Moore, the founder of Greenpeace, arguing that the green movements have been taken over by neo-Marxists promoting anti-trade, anti-globalisation and anti-civilisation. (Plimer 2009: ch 8). Every single one of those claims is false. Claims like these gain their plausibility by mixing universals and particulars. It’s a crass error of logic, whether it is made out of stupidity or deceit. To be against the slave trade, for instance, isn’t to be against trade as such. To be against Hitler’s plans to conquer the world isn’t to be against globalisation. To argue for social transformation beyond the status quo isn’t to be against civilisation, it is to argue for an alternative. Simple stuff, really. The argument concerns particulars, this form of trade, not trade as such, this form of civilisation, not civilisation as such. What Plimer has done is dehistoricised and naturalised specific social relations, taking them out of political controversy, intervention and alteration. It’s an obvious move, and it exposes the politics at work behind Plimer’s claim to science.
Plimer’s charges can just as easily, and with a lot more plausibility and evidence, be reversed. The argument is over what kind of trade, globalisation and civilisation we want to see. That’s a question for all people as citizens, not just the money-men and lobbies who set the terms of the so-called liberal world order and impose it over the heads of the world’s peoples. Plimer does not engage the arguments of the people he criticises, so it is impossible to subject his views on economics to much by way of criticism, either in terms of reason, logic or evidence. He thinks free trade and free markets are good things. I say all economic activity is managed and manipulated in one way or another and notions of freedom are mere ideological covers for less than free practices. At which point Plimer shouts neo-marxist and thinks that ends the issue.
Plimer is unaware that as the wrath of the people the world is growing, these labels no longer carry the weight they once did as ‘boo’ words.
Ecologists are pagans and communists? Well, to the extent that all life depends upon the sun, the moon, the air, the land, the rivers and seas, and hence that we all share the elements in the global commons, then we are all pagans and communists – at least we ought to be.
Of course, Plimer’s broad brush accusations are mere polemic. At no point does he do the difficult thing and engage with the arguments concerning the character of global processes of employment, investment and trade. There is an intellectual cowardice at the heart of these attacks. But, assuming that Plimer is correct, and that greens are really pagans, communists and marxists, does he really expect us to believe that the governments of the world have buckled to the pressure of this amorphous group of extremists? Because that’s what his case entails.
Politicians have embraced a premature scientific hypothesis because they are bombarded by environmental pressure groups and one set of scientists who have everything to gain.
Plimer 2009 ch 8
This traducing of the motives of scientists ought to be highlighted. There are many examples of scientists working for industry – Plimer is one – in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, animal testing, nuclear power, the arms trade, you name it. Scientists are not short of ways of making money. Yet Plimer expects us to believe that ‘one set of scientists’ have played up global heating for no other reason than commercial gain. As though these scientists would be short of work if they embraced an alternative theory and sought employment within the military-industrial complex. As though, if climate science was made up for pecuniary motives, other scientists would be unable to falsify their exaggerated claims. The deniers have been trying. And have failed. Plimer’s assertion is laughable and casts doubt on his credibility.
Politicians are bombarded by any number of pressure groups. It tends to be money that counts - money made from the exploitation of the planet and its people. Plimer, with his connections to the mining industry in Australia, knows all about the lobbying and pressure that comes from fossil fuel interests. The idea that governments succumb to the demands of ‘pagan’ and ‘communist’ environmental groups and ignore the pressure and power of carboniferous industry only has to be stated for its manifest absurdity to be apparent to all but those indulging their political prejudices. Further, as any number of scientists keep arguing, governments have done precious little over the years to move the planet onto a low-carbon footing, have procrastinated at every climate conference, have routinely capitulated to the industrial lobbies and have continually failed to act decisively on the scientific evidence. That’s the reason why many scientists can now be found advocating geo-engineering solutions in order to attempt to address the crisis in the climate system. Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, argues that although we are facing a climate emergency, governments are taking only ‘utterly trivial’ measures. Government and politics have failed miserably, hence Wadhams’ demand for geo-engineering and a worldwide nuclear power station "binge" in order to avoid runaway global warming.
If Plimer’s political views are ludicrous, his scientific reasoning is lamentable, to say the least. He claims that the science of global warming is unravelling:
Disillusionment is setting in because the dogma stated that as CO2 rises, so does temperature. There has been a rise in CO2 yet cooling is taking place. Dangerous global warming has not occurred …. The big losers are climate scientists whose advice is no longer being followed. They have overplayed their hand and decision-makers no longer trust their advice.
Plimer 2009 ch 8
That is just a crass piece of reasoning. It implies that there is a simple and direct correlation between a rise in CO2 and global warming. No scientist has ever argued such a thing. No scientist has ever said that CO2 is the only thing that affects Earth’s climate and no scientist has ever claimed that the temperature would increase monotonically in lockstep with CO2. No scientist would ever be so stupid as to argue this. If Plimer was playing to the galleries in certain newspapers, whose readers want their prejudices confirmed, such a passage would be understandable, if still wretched. That this is offered in a book that promised ‘the missing science’ on global warming is a dereliction. It’s also pathetic.
The scientists are dealing with carbon emissions going back two hundred and fifty years, the effects of which are felt over time, not at the same time. And that’s even before we start to analyse the cooling effect of factors like particulate pollution, which masks the heating that is taking place. A recent study (Foster and Rahmstorf 2011) demonstrates that the cooling effects of factors such as increased aerosols, ENSO, and low solar activity have been sufficient to mask CO2-induced warming. That explains Plimer’s apparent anomaly that ‘there has been a rise in CO2 yet cooling is taking place.’ Without the rise in CO2, the first decade of the twenty first century would have been significantly cooler than it actually was. That is evidence of global heating, although Plimer seems incapable of recognizing the fact. Plimer’s rather crude and simplistic reasoning is surprising in someone with a scientific background. Global warming doesn’t necessarily mean that the earth has to actually warm. It means that the Earth is warmer than it would have been. Remove the cooling factors listed above, and that points to an underlying warming trend.
As for the claim that global cooling rather than heating is taking place, this is repeated at every opportunity by climate change deniers. But it is nothing more than a statistical trick. The claim has no scientific weight at all. By taking the peak El Nino year of 1998 (when seas are warming) as the base, and comparing it with the La Nina year of 2007 (when seas are cooling), it is possible to read the slight dip in temperatures as evidence of global cooling. The fact is, however, that seven of the hottest ten temperatures in recorded history have come in the ten years after 1998. The overall trend remains upwards, as any wider time scale makes abundantly clear. This is very well known. The fact that the claim keeps being made simply reveals the very hard-faced political motivations of the deniers. Practising bogus science and hardball politics, the deniers accuse climate scientists of fake, politically driven, science. We shouldn’t be surprised. The capitalists are quite prepared to destroy the life support systems of the planet, so they will not think twice about denigrating and destroying any science that is of no commercial value to them.
Plimer’s claim that the world climate is cooling is no more than a statistical cheat. That might make for clever politics, but it undermines the scientific and political credibility of anyone who engages in such sharp practices. This is not serious science. The deniers are not trustworthy people. They are either dissemblers or dupes. Either way, they can be dismissed.
Plimer himself is no fool, so he must think that other people are. But in resorting to this crudest of devices, Plimer makes the mistake of showing his hand. His book claims to supply the missing science. But this is all he offers – distortion. We can carry on examining Plimer’s volcanic eruptions till doomsday, their effects fall far, far short of explaining rising temperatures. That’s not ‘green ideology’, just good, sound science.
Plimer also claims that ‘dangerous global warming has not occurred’. I suppose it depends on what, exactly, we mean by the word ‘dangerous’ - and where one lives. Plimer is an Australian. He must have noticed the heatwaves in Australia. These strike me to be about as dangerous as any heating could be, but no doubt Plimer would argue that they are a natural phenomenon. Indeed, they are. But what is different, as Tim Flannery argues, is the increasing incidence and intensity of these heatwaves.
If Plimer’s science is flaky, his comments on religion and spirituality are incoherent and, frankly, offensive. He is oblivious to the spiritual revolution underway in the world, the way that people are moving away from more organised forms of spirituality and giving expression to a more syncretic experience. How else can one make sense of this statement from Plimer?:
In science, we are in awe of Nature. In religion, we are in awe of God. Yet the new environmental religion is in awe of nothing. It is spiritually vacuous and negative. Christianity has a long tradition of using music for worship. This music, especially from the time of Bach and onwards, underpins all Western music. The environmental religion has no music, no traditions, no scholarship, no nothing. The new environmental religion has no big questions. It has no unknowns. When environmentalists recognise the religious aspects of their stance, then real discussion with scientists becomes possible.
Plimer 2009: 469
It is probably wisest to ignore such a comment. Never wrestle with a pig: you get covered in muck and the pig has all the fun. But I’m not going to let Plimer enlist the sublime J.S. Bach to his grubby commercial cause. Bach has nothing in common with Plimer and his kind, as any examination of their individual biographies will show. Greens are anti-civilisation. I was brought up on the TV series Civilisation. Here, Kenneth Clark hailed the ‘universal genius’ of Bach. ‘He was universal. A great musical critic said of him: 'He is the spectator of all musical time and existence, to whom it is not of the smallest importance whether a thing be new or old, so long as it is true.' (Clark 1969: ch 9). Bach is true, and he’s universal. Pope Benedict XVI has spoken well here.
I am convinced that music really is the universal language of beauty which can bring together all people of good will on Earth.
Benedict XVI, Paul VI Audience Hall, Vatican City, 16 April 2007
I take that to mean precisely what it says. Catholic means universal. The true, the good and the beautiful is accessible to all people of good will. And note well that reference to good will. It’s a highly important term and it makes all the difference. The philosopher Kant founds the universal upon the conception of the good will: ‘It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will.’ (Kant GMM 1991:60). A good will is one which constantly acts from the motive of respect for the moral law. Kant therefore concludes that ‘a good will seems to constitute the indispensable condition of our very worthiness to be happy.’ (Kant GMM 1991:60).
I see no evidence of good will or the moral law or a universal ethic in Plimer’s condescending remarks, only abuse and exclusive claims that are designed to delegitimize the positions and beliefs of others. Such an approach will destroy Christianity.
Surely, Plimer cannot be claiming that Christianity has a monopoly of music? Music is indeed the universal language. Christianity does have a great musical tradition. But it is also the religion that turned Pan, expert dancer and musician, into the devil.
“Has anyone ever observed that music emancipates the spirit? Gives wings to thought? And that the more one becomes a musician the more one is also a philosopher”
Those words were written by Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who denounced Christianity as a ‘slave morality’ and who announced the death of God. Plimer, frankly, is out of his depth on this question. Has he never heard of Pythagoras and the music of the spheres? What about the non-Christian music from different parts of the world?
And when it comes to Nature and spirituality, what about the deep ecologist Arne Naess? Naess’ eco-philosophy is based upon Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura, the idea that God and Nature are one. Plimer elsewhere accuses environmentalists of believing in ‘pagan superstitions’. Now he claims environmentalists believe in nothing. It is clear that Plimer is just churning out abuse. Inconsistency in reasoning and logic is bad enough. But by such inconsistency in abuse, Plimer damns himself. That Plimer could make a statement as ignorant as that is breathtaking in its arrogance, certainly, but above all it is revelatory – it reveals something about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of climate change deniers.
Compare Plimer’s aggressive and haughty assertion of Christian spirituality with what the ecologist and conservationist John Muir writes about green spirituality.
"Let the Earth guide you like an expert tracker to what Thoreau calls the Art of God, what the Buddha calls Awakening, and Jesus described as the Home of God.
Let the earth guide us inward to what the Hindu people call Atman, Jews address as Adonai, Emerson termed the Oversoul, and the Muslims worship as Allah, this is the heart of our world."
What Plotinus called the One, Tillich called the Ground of our Being. You get the picture. There’s room for all of us. We stand on common ground; the moral law within which we all share makes for a universal ethic of the common good without.
There’s simply no comparison between the statements. Plimer’s statement is characterised by peevishness and narrowness, Muir’s by a generosity and expansiveness of the spirit. You can make your own mind up which statement is closer to the teaching of Jesus. Apart from anything else, to label people Pagan and anti-Christian, Communist and anti-capitalist is a very dangerous game when increasing numbers of people around the world no longer regard these as terms of abuse. Plimer might have missed it, but Christianity and capitalism are not that popular at the moment, and for very good reasons. Christianity might recover, but the capital system looks beyond redemption to me – other than the redemption that comes from below as people reclaim their social powers from the new alien gods of state and capital.
Plimer’s attempt to portray environmentalists as pagans just won’t wash. There may well be environmentalists who are pagans. So what? Is Plimer proposing another bout of witch-burning, putting the final nail into the coffin of Christianity in the process? We are all pagans. Beneath our sophisticated veneers, we all instinctively know that we depend upon land, sea, air and water. We go from dust to dust as we return to the Earth. We are of the Earth.
Naked we enter this world, and naked we leave it. No matter how fine and fancy the garb we wear in between may be, everything we do depends upon Nature. It’s time to be comfortable in our natural skin. It suits the other animals fine.
Plimer’s crude caricature of environmentalism as ‘pagan’ and ‘spiritually vacuous’ reveals either the depths of his ignorance or the extent of his prejudice. Even the briefest of searches of my library turns up dozens of books on green spirituality. Earth Spirituality E Echlin 1999; Igniting a Revolution Voices in Defense of the Earth S Best ed 2006; Seeing God Everywhere Essays on Nature and the Sacred Barry McDonald ed 2003; The Politics of Inner Experience 1990. Plimer should also try Return of the Dark Light Mother or New Age Armageddon by Monica Sjoo (1992) so he can fulminate further about ‘pagan superstition’. The eco-feminists tend to scare the life out of the brave soldiers of science and industry, so I shall frighten him with Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola (Estes 2008 Rider). The arguments in these books may be wrong. They may be right. That’s all arguable. Read them. But to say these works lack spirituality and lack a sense of awe is just plain wrong. Indeed, if anything, green spirituality can be criticised for a tendency to show too much awe for ‘Nature’, as though there is such a thing as Nature as such. I wonder if, behind the ancient Goddess, there is little more than amoral biological determinism. Or, maybe, the true, the good and the beautiful are all designed into the universe after all, and we need to tap into that cosmic harmony and order.
Either way, Plimer’s denigration of environmentalism as spiritually vacuous is risible. There is more spirituality in one line written by Rachel Carson than in anything Plimer has said, written or done. But I’m more interested in rescuing the Christian message from Plimer’s idolatrous, money-grubbing hands. Plimer abuses pagans and communists and takes his stand on the ‘philosophical optimism’ of the ‘tradition of Judeo-Christian religions’ (Plimer 2009: 471). I can take a stand on that tradition also. I shall credit Plimer with meaning what he says. I shall take his declaration of faith seriously. The anti-Christian accusation can be thrown right back at Plimer and his ilk. We need to know how, in their Christianity, the Creation relates to the Creator. And we need to know how their relation to the Creation corresponds to Christian principle. These are men steeped in the business world, in the exploitation of natural and human resources – of workers and the planet. In what way is this Christian? Jesus made it abundantly clear that attachment to wealth estranges human beings from God because 'No man can serve two masters . . . Ye cannot serve God and mammon' (Mt 6 : 24). Attachment to wealth also estranges human beings from each other. Jesus urged, 'I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings’ (Lk 16 : 9). To the non-obscurantist, this clearly means that we should avoid dishonest gain and use our money to benefit our fellow men and women. Another of Jesus’ sayings is pertinent in light of Plimer’s industrial interests: ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal’. (Matthew 6:19). Instead of accumulating treasures, we need to protect the common treasures of the Earth against those who would enclose, expropriate and exploit them for themselves.
Read the account of the mission of Jesus to the Apostles as written in the Gospel of Matthew: “And as you go, preach the message, ‘The kingdom is at hand!' ….Take no gold, nor silver, nor money in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff; for the workers is worth his keep.” (Matthew 10:7, 9–11). This was the text that St Francis heard in the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels (Santa Maria degli Angeli), the Porziuncola, on the plain below Assisi, on the feast of St. Matthias, February 24, 1208. According to Thomas of Celano, this was the turning point in the life of St Francis. From this moment on he devoted himself to a life of apostolic poverty, declaring, “This is what I wish; this is what I am seeking. This is what I want to do from the bottom of my heart.”
So, Christian principles lead to some very awkward questions at the level of worldly practice. Who, really, considers the Creation to be sacred? Who, in the way that they relate to and act upon the Creation really worships the Creator? The Greens, who seek to protect the Earth from commercial exploitation and despoliation, yet who are derided as ‘pagans’ by Plimer? Or industrialists and scientists with mining interests, who possess a very material concern with making money out of nature – people like Ian Plimer?
This condemnation of Greens as communists and pagans crops up a lot in the pronouncements of reactionaries. Well, Jesus’ repudiation of mammon sounds like communism to me. Ah, comes the response, Jesus was thinking of the spiritual world and not of the material world. Plimer, Helmer and their ilk are big on the spiritual message of Christianity, whilst at the same time being thoroughly absorbed in the business of making money out of labour and nature. There are two sources of wealth, Marx argued in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, nature and labour (The First International and After CGP 1974: 344/5). And those with business and industrial interests know this. They should do, because that’s precisely how they make their money. That’s why they hate communism. It has nothing to do with affirming Christian principles, and everything to do with denying them.
So, ironically, the supposedly anti-Christian environmentalists seem to have much more in common with Jesus in being communists who refuse to venerate money and profit. But rather than claim that Jesus Christ was a communist, I’ll let Jesus speak for himself. 'No man can serve two masters . . . Ye cannot serve God and mammon' (Mt 6 : 24).
'I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings’ (Lk 16 : 9).
In the ‘Concluding Exhortations’ to Hebrews we read:
‘Keep on loving each other as brothers’ (Heb 13: 1)
‘For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come’ (Heb 13: 14).
‘And, do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.’ (Heb 13: 16).
The enduring city is the sustainable society based on social and environmental justice. Jerusalem means city of peace.
“Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. He must turn from evil and do good; he must seek peace and pursue it.” (1 Peter 3: 8-11).
So the cry, ‘defend Christian civilisation from communism’ is nonsensical – it is Christianity which started communism. Christianity is communism: ‘All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need’ (Acts 2: 44-45).
Acts is clear that the believers share their possessions.
‘All the believers were one in heart and mind. No-one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had… There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need’ (Acts 4: 32: 35).
Sound familiar? It ought to. It’s Marx, 1800 years later.
In a more advanced phase of communist society, when the enslaving subjugation of individuals to the division of labour, and thereby the antithesis between intellectual and physical labour, have disappeared; when labour is no longer just a means of keeping alive but has itself become a vital need; when the all-round development of individuals has also increased their productive powers and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can society wholly cross the narrow horizon of bourgeois right and inscribe on its banner: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!
Marx Critique of the Gotha Programme FI 1974: 347/8
There are plenty more quotes like these in the Bible. And plenty more like these in Marx. There would be – the Judaeo-Christian ethic is communist to the core.
The authors of Faith in the City (Faith in the City The Report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on Urban Priority Areas (1985) comment on Marx's perception that evil is to be found, not just in the human heart, but in the very structures of economic and social relationships. ‘This perception is also found to a notable degree in the Old Testament (from which, in fact, Marx may have derived it), where there is explicit recognition of the inevitable tendency of the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer unless some constraint is imposed to limit the freedom of individuals to profit without restraint from a market economy.’ (1985: 51). Marx came from a long line of rabbis. Communism and the demand for social justice can be found all over the Old and the New Testament. Anyone in any doubt on the matter should just read Isaiah.
Margaret Thatcher dismissed Faith in the City as a ‘marxist document’, thus revealing how little she knew of the Bible. I have no doubt that there are many knowledgeable people out there who are so clever as to be able to mishear and misrepresent the language in order to tell us what ‘blessed are the cheesemakers’ really means, but the language of the Bible is simple and non-obscurantist, its meaning is plain.
Plimer attacks the Greens as Marxists, and as pagans and communists, but passages from the Bible such as those quoted above – and there are plenty more from where they came from - make it clear that the Marxists have been propounding the idea of communism in the culpable absence of Christians like Plimer. The split between spirit and matter and the attempt to denigrate those concerned to respect life and nature as sacred is anti-Christian, it is against Christian principles. How ironic that it is left to Greens, ‘superstitious’ pagans and atheistic marxists to turn the Gospel into reality. And make no mistake on this point, the Christian message is meant to be translated into reality. Luke gives Jesus’ words directly here: "Every one of you who does not renounce all he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). That ethic bears no relation at all to the possessive individualism of capitalist society. None.
To argue that Christianity is concerned solely with spiritual matters is the oldest of dodges. It’s so crude that it really suggests intellectual and political weakness on the part of those who attempt it. Is that really the height of their sophistication? If so, then there really is nothing to beat. And the view presents a spirit and matter dualism that directly contradicts the Christian message and the way that it is to be translated into reality.
Matthew is clear as to where the kingdom of Heaven is to be realized. Take the parable of the weeds (Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43), which is a parable about the Kingdom. Matthew states explicitly that "the field is the world" (Matt. 13: 38). Matthew does not conclude the story by transferring the kingdom to some spiritual place other than the world but states clearly that "the Son of Man will send his angels, who will remove from his kingdom all scandals and all workers of iniquity" (Matt 13: 41), so that "the just will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father" (Matt 13: 43).
For a Christian to throw the word communist about as a term of abuse is an abomination. I don’t intend to weigh the argument down with multiple quotes from the Bible. The texts quoted above are more than sufficient to prove the point. The truth of the matter is obvious – the idea of communism runs right through the New Testament. But I want to take this question further.
Peace with the Creator and with the Creation
The connection between Christianity and communism, the Creation and environmentalism can be pushed further than social justice between human beings to embrace the commons of all living organisms. Charles Darwin argued that all life is descent with modification from a common origin. All living forms are equal to the God/Nature that is the ground of our being, so it follows that they are equal to each other within the interconnected web of life. Nature may well be red, but not in tooth and claw. The sacred significance of the material world is becoming increasingly evident.
One of the little garden heroes upon which life on Earth depends.
A transcendent God removed from nature no doubt appeals to those with a vested interest in pillaging and exploiting the planet and its resources. Such a God has no jurisdiction in the material world and comes with no moral and political implications. Whatever happens down here on this dis-godded Earth is, in contradistinction to the Lord’s Prayer, most certainly not ‘as it is in Heaven’. The moral and political imperative ‘thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Earth’ disappears as ethics come to be safely locked away in the attic.
There is only one thing wrong with this view – it is wrong from first to last. The distinction between Heaven and Earth, Creator and Creation, the spiritual and the material, cannot be maintained without making a nonsense of Christian ethics. It is plain that transcendence and immanence are held in some kind of relation, something which testifies to the validity of a spiritual appreciation of the Earth and its creatures. It was in this spirit that in 1979 the Reverend James Parks Morton, dean of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, asked James Lovelock to address the congregation on the subject of Gaia. Morton went on to emphasize the spiritual dimensions of Gaia, what he called "Earth as God's Body." The "sacramental universe" theological movement conceives God as both immanent within nature and transcendent beyond it. (Interview with Alan Atkisson, "The Green Cathedral: An Interview with Reverend James Parks Morton," In Context: A Quarterly of Human Sustainable Culture, no. 24, Late Winter 1990,16, www.context.org/ICLIB/IC24/Morton.htm.)
A true theological understanding gives us a moral ecology, a morality which is independent of blind biological imperatives, transcendent and immanent, identifying a purpose within and beyond nature. This is a sound and sober moral position that gives us some relation to nature and some responsibility for the choices we make in living our lives according to ends we determine in relation to our material environment.
In Peace with God the Creator, Peace with all creation, published on 1 January 1990, Pope John Paul II emphasised the moral and religious dimensions of the environment and the environmental crisis. In this document, the Pope declares that 'Christians in particular realise that their duty towards nature and Creator are an essential part of their faith' (No 15). ‘Essential’ is as strong a word as could be used. There is no sense here of the unimportance of the material world. The duty towards both Creator and Creation and the creative relation between the two is an essential part of the Christian faith. The crude separation between matter and spirit cannot be made and any attempt to enforce such a separation, to silence men and women of faith on issues of material concern, reflects poorly upon those who resort to such cheap tactics. Bigots do not have the monopoly of religion, even if they often have the loudest voices and tell the biggest lies.
Peace with God the Creator, Peace with all creation is of a piece with the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) programme, launched by the World Council of Churches in Vancouver in 1983. This Council has consistently emphasised the extent to which ecology, development, justice and poverty are spiritual concerns. Any religion that divorces the spirit from these essential material concerns of flesh and blood human beings is doomed to irrelevance and decay. In this light, the attacks by the likes of Helmer and Plimer stand revealed for what they are, crude attempts at political bullying, rendering the spiritual impotent and leaving the material world defenceless against commercial exploitation. The motivations at work are not Christian at all. These are men heavily involved in the material affairs of politics and economics. Plimer, with his industrial background, affirms Judaeo-Christian traditions against paganism, Helmer is telling men and women of faith to keep morality out of the business of planetary exploitation and keep quiet. This crude split between spirit and matter denies the spiritual any practical effect and empties the material world of any spiritual meaning. The sacred is rendered impotent and the secular is made available for exploitation.
Behind the assault is fear. The ecological message is making inroads within all religions. Climate change deniers have effectively disabled politics, denigrated the science and now they are targeting religion. The surprise is that we have let them get away with their cretinous assertions for so long. Their arguments are as empty as the economic system they are seeking to defend.
On 17 January 2001, the Pope made a statement on the climate crisis with such power and clarity that its meaning could not be doubted, calling for an 'ecological conversion' to avert a global ecological disaster.
The likes of Roger Helmer would no doubt question the scientific credentials of the Pope, as he has done with respect to the Church of England - as though men and women of wisdom and intelligence speak and write without having sought out advice and information reflecting the latest and the best scientific research. The Pope is well informed, the Archbishop of Canterbury is well informed. Prince Charles, another easy target here, is well informed. If they are wrong, then countless scientists the world over are also wrong. Of course, the number of scientists for and against the theory of man made climate change is not important, it’s the evidence that really counts. If the science is correct, then one scientist is enough. If the science is wrong, then one scientist would be enough to say so. It’s not the overwhelming numbers of scientists who favour climate change that matters, it’s the ‘overwhelming evidence’ in favour of human made climate change. The evidence for man-made climate change is ‘overwhelming’, and that’s the reason why the greater numbers of the world’s scientists support AGW.
It's the likes of Helmer who are out of step, in both science and religion. He represents a mode of libertarian economic and political activity whose time has long since gone, and good riddance to it. If it's climate scientists that Helmer wants, then there is no shortage of them, all pointing to man-made global heating caused by the emission of greenhouse gases as the only explanation we have for the increases in temperature that has taken place. That’s the very science that Helmer rejects. He simply wants to hear only from those with whom he agrees. Helmer is typical of those who simply seeks evidence that conforms to his pre-existing beliefs and denies the evidence that contradicts them. It’s that simple. Many people only see what they already believe rather than believe what they see. Now that’s religious faith at its unthinking worst.
Whilst Max Weber and Carl Gustav Jung emphasized disenchantment's cultural and psychological impoverishment, the historian Lynn White drew attention to its environmental consequences: "In antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit," he argued. "These spirits were accessible to men, but were very unlike men: centaurs, fauns, and mermaids show their ambivalence. Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated." With animism rejected and suppressed as demonic heresy, Christianity "made it possible to exploit nature in a mode of indifference to the feelings of natural objects." (Lynn White, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science, vol. 155, no. 3767, March 10, 1967). Those who set out to search the Bible and the religious canon to find evidence of the role of religion in the desacralization of nature did not have to work hard. The opening pages of the Bible contain this line: ‘God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’ (Gen 1: 28).
Subdue? The new theology now interprets ‘dominion’ as stewardship. It is evident that the account in Genesis does not mean an arrogant, exploitative, utilitarian and destructive domination of the Earth and its creatures. That is sacrilege. Further, when Job questions God’s purposes, God challenges Job in response: ‘Can you set up God's dominion over the earth?’ The implication is that humanity cannot set up God’s dominion on Earth and ought not try to do so. But ‘men as gods’ made the attempt anyway, with much ecological destruction as a result. The old idea of nature as a living organism was expunged and nature was dis-godded. But there is hope. Whatever the past practice, it is always possible to find the right interpretation and the right path.
It may have been the Christian theology of forgiveness that caused the early Celtic world to embrace the new religion so dearly. And for my money, if 'Celtic spirituality' means anything, it means showing how a culture ripped apart by violence can again be made whole. That is what makes it a suitable metaphor for what the world needs deeply today. For no place is more sacred, no peoples more worthy of honour, than those that have made beauty blossom anew out of desecration. (McIntosh 2001: 22).
If Christianity read dominion as domination in the past, there is nothing stopping it from reading it as stewardship now. For too long, humanity as a whole has seen itself as a despot, building what scientist Robert Boyle called an ‘empire of man’ over nature. Such is the consequence of maintaining a straight separation between the material and the spiritual world. Human beings must quickly come to understand that this autonomy from nature is a death-dealing delusion and stop and turn back as we hurtle towards the abyss. It is time, therefore, to begin and sustain the 'ecological conversion' which Pope John Paul II called for. (Pope John Paul II, 'God made man the steward of creation', L'Osservatore Romano, 24 January 2001, page 11). ‘God made man the steward of creation’. Unfortunately, ‘man’ hasn’t always lived up to that responsibility. Not only has he despoiled Creation, he has destroyed his own civilisation, the civilisation which he has built all over nature. But hope can always be found rising from amidst the ruins of a previous generation’s delusions and destructions.