Tom McLaughlin [03/15/2007]

By Tom McLaughlin

They practice their rituals fervently and insist that everyone believe as they do. They see themselves as morally superior to the rest of us and they pressure government to enact laws that would punish unbelievers. They preach that unless we all do exactly as they say, billions will die and the world will come to an end. In some sects, animals are more sacred than humans. They worship a god they call Gaia (pronounced gi-yuh) and they wont rest until they impose their beliefs on everyone.Recycling is their most sacred rite. Bicycling and composting are also paths to holiness. They evangelize the world claiming that if everyone recycles and makes compost piles, Gaia will be pleased. Anyone who mentions studies showing that recycling uses more energy than it saves commits blasphemy. Such sacrilege so outrages the Cult of Gaia, they binge on organic vegetables and Ben & Jerrys Rainforest Crunch until their inner turmoil diminishes. Lately, their fire-and-brimstone preaching about the End Times of global warming is gaining disciples across the globe. According to The Conway Daily Sun on Saturday, two-thirds of N.H. towns have articles on their warrants for spring town meeting demanding that state and national governments do something about global warming.Even the conservative Drudge Report carried the blaring headline, Report warns of coming chaos last Sunday. Clicking on it took me to an Associated Press report declaring The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people wont have enough water... At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels... Also forecast were malaria epidemics and killer hurricanes.Right above that story were Google-sponsored links declaring Truth of Global WarmingHow to Avoid The Extinction of ManA Survival Wake Up Call! savethehumansnow.org and The Coming World WarFind out what Nostradamus says about the years 2007-2012. NostradamusOnline.com.Droughts and floods arent bad enough? We have to endure malaria epidemics, killer hurricanes and a world war at the same time? This is serious. Gaia is really angry.A headline in Saturdays London Times declared: Europe goes nuclear in battle to save the planet. Europeans have converted to the Gaia Mother Earth Cult, too, and theyre among its most fervent disciples. According to another weekend story from UPI, Czech President Vaclav Klaus declared that Environmentalism is a religion that seeks to reorganize the world order as well as social behavior and value systems worldwide.Klaus observation fits with what Im seeing where I live in New England and around the United States. Oregons governor threatened to fire the state climatologist for the blasphemy of doubting human behavior is the cause of global warming. Delawares climatologist faces Inquisition for a similar offense. Virginias former climatologist published a book about expensive [global warming] policies that are likely to have little or no detectable effect on the planet's temperature. Notice hes now the former state climatologist.The Sunday Telegraph reported that other blasphemous climatologists are threatened with death: Scientists who questioned mankind's impact on climate change have received death threats and claim to have been shunned by the scientific community. They say the debate on global warming has been hijacked by a powerful alliance of politicians, scientists and environmentalists who have stifled all questioning about the true environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions. Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, has received five deaths threats by e-mail since raising concerns about the degree to which man was affecting climate change... [Ball] claimed the theory of man-made global warming had become a religion forcing alternative explanations to be ignored.Jehovahs Witnesses knock on doors telling people to prepare for the End Times. They believe in their religion as much as Gaians do, but they dont impose their views on us. They treat people who dont believe as they do with respect. Periodically, they go up on a mountaintop somewhere when they think the world will end, and when it doesnt they go back down and check over their theological calculations. They dont insist on restrictive government measures that would shut down our economy as the Cult of Gaia does.The historical record indicates wild climate swings here in what is now New England, and nearly everywhere else on earth as well. On Vermont mountaintops you can find fossil shells from tropical seas alongside bedrock scrapes from glaciers more than a mile thick. Theres coal from tropical rain forests in Antarctica. The whole planet saw extreme climate swings countless times before humans ever existed. None of that matters to the Cult of Gaia though. They still insist that strictly-enforced practice of their religious rites will stabilize our climate in its present state forever.Perhaps they also believe we increase sunlight by setting our clocks ahead. Tom McLaughlin is a teacher and columnist who lives in Lovell, Maine. He can be reached on his blog at http://tommclaughlin.blogspot.com/.