Against the Climate Doomsday Cult

It is with a growing sense of discomfort that I view the discussion surrounding climate change. In these days of the Copenhagen summit, it is hard to escape the permanent mass media bombardment of climate change messages.

So, we are ruining the planet, and those cute polar bears may find it hard to survive in 2025, or for that reason, in 2500?

I could not care less. This is not to say that is does not make sense to preserve our current resources and limit pollution wherever that is possible. I do that on an individual level by no longer owning a car, instead using car sharing and ride sharing methods and collective forms of urban transportation. Admittedly, that is easier for me as a European than for most Americans. With its current pattern of human settlements, especially the US is ill prepared to use natural energy resources wisely.

Then again, the discussion about climate change is more likened to an eschatological cult rather than a qualified discourse. Bluntly put, we are currently almost being forced by brute mass-mesia means to become mass hysterical.The discussion is not so much about scientific evidence any longer, but bears all the typical marks of a religious doomsday cult.

• The effects of climate change are discussed under the aspect of destruction on a global scale. Bad as it may be if the planet gets destroyed, the truth is: Each and every single one of us will only have to die their one and only individual death. Bearing this truism in mind will do a lot to relax every one of us and keep us clear of the mindset of an hysterical nurse trying to save all patients in a hospital engulfed by blazing flames.
• Global destruction is attributed to human action as the primary cause, mediated by climate change. Irrespective of the causes for climate change, human-made or natural - the vanishing of species has always been on the earth's agenda. Even before cars, aluminum smelters or nuclear power plants were invented. Admittedly, the quantum leap of the human mind being able to engineer these devices may have accelerated the path towards depreciation. Then again, is it legitimate to ask whether mankind itself is not part of nature. On a collective level, the climate debate is very reminiscent of our individual fear of death. The psychological mechanism behind this seems to be fatally similar to the one that has made us willing indulgers of the so called war against terrorism. Fear of a grand evil has made us blind for the fact that our individual danger of dying during our lifetimes as a direct result of climate change is statistically pretty insignificant.
• If we act like members of a religious cult, then probably we are. It has become fashionable to be able to buy a blemish-free conscience as countries or individuals by paying money. This is reminiscent of the good old tradition in the Catholic Church years ago. The tradition of selling letters of indulgence. The truth is, giving an earthly insitution money did nothing to bring you one rung closer to heaven. Neither does it help our planet to buy CO2 certificates or pay a voluntary CO2 surcharge on air travel as an individual passenger. Paying money does not reduce emissions, it just helps the poor (but ecologically clean) guy to make a buck or industries to prosper on hot air promises, depending on the eye of the beholder. But yes, it makes you feel better, and it helps you to justify yourself vis-a-vis the Holy Climate Inquisition, also known as the IPCC.
• Preach water, delve in wine. The global movement to save the planet is always something to be done by the others. Like the War on Terror, it is mostly an instrument to exert political power and control over civil liberties. You can see that in Copenhagen. Instead of holding a video conference with the available technologies, many leaders will descend on the Danish capital in their government jets. Of course, to take but one example, it makes extreme climate-sense to use several Boeing 747s to move one predident's hind from Washington DC to Copenhagen for a few hours.

As can be remarked easily with a bit of good will, the discussion on climate change bears all the hallmarks of a (relogious) cult, rather than a sound discussion - the instruments used to influence and control the public are those of nonrational mass psychology, some symptoms are fatally reminiscent of medieval forms of questioning the conscience in the sense of belief rather than rationale.

Seen this way, we may have something much more serious to control than climate change: The danger of a society going totalitarian, intolerant and irrational in a Koresh way.