One of the arguments put forward by quite a few people is that acceptance of climate change as being real is a religion. Thus Tony Abbott, ex Pm of Australia and authoritarian Catholic (he does not like the current pope), says:
If you think climate change is the most important thing, everything can be turned to proof. I think that to many it has almost a religious aspect to it.
A few years previously Abbott said
Environmentalism has managed to combine a post-socialist instinct for big government with a post-Christian nostalgia for making sacrifices in a good cause. Primitive people once killed goats to appease the volcano gods. We’re more sophisticated now but are still sacrificing our industries and our living standards to the climate gods to little more effect…
so far, it’s climate change policy that’s doing harm; climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm.
Fox news host, David Web claims that
Climate change revision is the reformation of the new global warming cult. It’s the religion of the Left… America the prosperous is the Satan. Hey, every religion needs a Satan… [It helps] scaring the younger generations… They’re easy to frighten, just tell them their world is ending… but do all these climate strikers know what they’re protesting for? Seems the discussion is more often centered around [carbon dioxide] than the environment at large… Our environment is everything around us including and importantly, our economic environment. We have to be able to afford the things we want to do,”
We may have to be able to afford the consequences of doing the things ‘we’ want to do, as well. The economy depends on the ecology. Without a working ecology we will have severe problems. However, protecting the economy and its power structures from this ecological realisation, seems vital to this set of ideas. Perhaps it is the challenge to those structures that is the main problem for these people?
Sky News host James Morrow says climate change is “as much about a new materialist religion of globalism” than it is about anything else.
These kind of statements seem to be a fairly standard rightist line – taken to imply that climate change is irrational dogma. Strangely they don’t make that implication about ‘real’ religion, but it indicates how they think.
However, if the act of accepting that climate change is real is a religion, then its not a comforting religion, or a religion that promises salvation. The religion gets even less comforting as time and resistance to action by the power elites continues.
The faith that is comforting is the joint faith that climate change is not happening and that what neoliberals call ‘free markets,’ working through the “invisible hand” of their God, will deliver liberty and prosperity and solutions to all problems. This faith forms what we might call the ‘Religion of Mammon’. With this religion we don’t have to do anything, or we can fight to keep emitting pollution and poison, and can thank their Lord that the corporate power elite have our best interests at heart, so we can be joyful when neoliberals give these masters of the universe even more power.
We might wonder if characterizing this ‘Religion of Mammon’ as a real religion is problematic? That might be so, if it were not for the well known Protestant “prosperity gospel” or “prosperity theology” which seems quite related to it. Prosperity preachers often seem to have a predatory relationship to their followers, in that they can sometimes claim the more a worshipper gives to the Church financially, the more they will receive from God. Worshippers should finance their private jets for the Lord’s work. In this religion poverty is a sin, and God’s favour is measured by wealth and success. Holding onto the faith that the economy will serve you well is central.
The prosperity religion fits well with neoliberalism and anti-welfare, while psychologically compensating for the effects of neoliberalism and its massively unequal distribution of wealth, and the struggle of ordinary people to move up, or even keep their jobs. It assumes you can worship both God and Mammon (because Mammon is God), and that a wealthy person can get through the eye of a needle as easily as anyone else, perhaps more easily as God is rewarding them.
While I have not yet done the research, all the prominent prosperity evangelists I am aware of, seem unworried about climate change. Everything is in God’s hands; humans have no capacity to destroy the world without the consent of God. If climate change comes it is part of the end times and the faithful will be saved. For example, evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll stated that there was little need to look after the environment as Jesus was returning. He declared: “I know who made the environment… He’s coming back, and he’s going to burn it all up. So yes, I drive an SUV” (quoted in Veldman The Gospel of Climate Skepticism).
Australia’s Prime Minster has worked in marketing, and is an open follower of the Prosperity Gospel, attending the biggest Church preaching this kind of theology in Australia. It is unusual for Australian politicians to make a big public noise about their religion, so that marks it as special. He also appears to be unconcerned about climate change, and wishes to promote coal mining and coal energy for the benefit of the established economy. If Jesus is coming, then why bother trying to save the Earth? Saving the Earth, might even be going against God’s will and therefore be sinful.
In general, Mr. Morrison also seems quite comfortable with the conjoined Religion of Mammon. I certainly have never seen him criticise it at all, but if people can tell me where he does I will be interested.
Following on from these parallels, it seems fairly straightforward to assert the hypothesis that the prosperity gospel is both comforting, and supportive of the Religion of Mammon; it gives it backing and blends into more or less seamlessly.
The main, non religious, logic that backs the Religion of Mammon, is the idea that a consensus about the evidence from scientists who study the subject of climate change must be wrong, and that the lack of consensus from economists and social scientists about the evidence for benefits of neoliberal economics is irrelevant.
In both cases the Mammonist response is “sinister conspiracy,” and this seems to emphasise that faith in their doctrine comes first, before the evidence of the world.
With the Religion of Mammon life is easy. The correctness of science can be decided by whether it supports the elites of this religion’s favoured brand of corporate domination or not. If it does, it is real, and if it doesn’t, it must be imaginary. This position seems part of the way they try to make sure we all get ruled by their favoured big corporations and the few of the wealth elite, and never the people. Entrenched corporations must never be curtailed. They could well be the expression of divine will.
As David Web implies above, the most important part of our overall environment is the economic system, and that must not be altered. Any attempts to alter it can then be condemned as ‘socialist,’ because the neoliberals have spent 40 years telling us socialism is bad, and equals state communism. As he says “every religion needs a Satan.”
But if you think all climate scientists are socialists, you probably don’t know many scientists, or you think socialism is scientific – which I do not, although it is a better theory of life than neoliberalism, which would not be hard…
However, this politicization is unreal. The idea that the science of climate change is legitimate, is not exclusive to the left, there are quite a few people on the right who think it is worth taking note of, even though they get shouted down, and told they are not proper members of the Church of Mammon. A YouGov survey implies that only 15% of people in the US think climate is not changing or humans are not partly responsible for the change. A recent Pew Report claims that 67% of people in the US think the government is doing too little to reduce the effects of global climate change, and 77% think the US should be developing Renewable Energy in preference to expanding fossil fuels.
So there is a reasonable number on the political right who seem like they would support action, but then many Republicans do not seem keen on neoliberalism either, (or they protest against its effects), and many non prosperity gospel Christians are now facing up to climate change, and talking about the importance of not destroying God’s creation. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. The Religion of Mammon may be becoming more isolated, but that could make it stronger, as it clamps down on communication with sinners.
Perhaps because of the comfort provided by their religion, the Mammon elites do not seem interested in preparing for natural risks; this is a weakness which may affect support for them in the long run. They are capable of preparing for other risks, but not environmental ones. They even seem happy creating new risks as with releasing more poisons, such as coal ash and so on. This is odd. And the only explanation I can think of is that they feel they must support the corporate mining elite, or they are bought by that elite – so what if a few peasants get sick?
We are faced with the simple fact that because of their ideology, that Mammonists in Australia, cut back on fire prevention, refused to talk to worried fire chiefs, ignored all the warnings from scientists, ignored the severity of the drought, and hindered preparations… As a result the East coast burned, the worst it has apparently ever burned. Farms and forests gone. Rainforests that have not burnt in hundreds, maybe thousands, of years have burnt.
I guess they must be pleased that they ignored all the alarmists, and kept the faith with their comforting religion of free market denial, despite the fact it seems to be getting hotter every other year, and never returns to ‘normal.’
This is why they still want to violate their supposed ‘free market’ principles, and pour taxpayers’ money into coal energy and coal mines, because no private company will build coal power without subsidy, but it makes sure that taxpayers are subsidising the right people.
The system is self reinforcing, as it means that the reason for the solutions to climate change looking socialist is that, until recently, very few non-socialist types of solutions have been presented to the general public – other than leave it to the market, which it seems the Church of Mammon does not believe either. The question is whether those non-socialist solutions have been actively suppressed, or whether they have been ignored, with the aim of squeezing a bit more fossil fuel profit from the disaster. Of course it may be possible neoliberal theory is so inadequate it cannot deal with environmental disasters at all, and so its holders have to pretend it is not happening.
Oh, and on the other side of the business sector. The high employing tourism industry is estimated, by Australian Financial Review, to have lost about AU$4.5 billion, as a result of the fires. But they are mostly small business and so to be abandoned. The Religion of Mammon only respects the massively wealthy, as they clearly have the approval of their Lord.
Tags: climate change, neoliberalism, politics
Climate, technology and chaos Blog 
January 27, 2020 at 7:14 am |
Well said, Jonathan, and well studied. I think there is something to be said for the idea that propositions in contemporary conversations can be expressions of religion. I grant that. For example, “science” is treated as religion by many people. Generally it is a narrow version of science, ie it is Newtonian, so if someone talks about ideas coming out of quantum physics, for example, they are considered to be cranks. Having a religious stance enables you to bail out of the complexities of real life fairly early on.
The only salvation in all this is ethics. I subscribe to Albert Schweitzer’s definition of ethics, as having regard to the well-being of others (and to the natural world – that’s my addition). If you have real regard to the well-being of others, you will delve into detail as much as is needed, and respect the truth of it. But the mindless leaders we have have bailed out long before this paragraph.
January 31, 2020 at 7:37 am |
I agree that Schweitzer’s principle of reverence for life is an important idea, and points to the contradiction in ethics, that what is good for one being is not good for another being, “It is easily possible to do evil and good at the same time.” “good conscience is an invention of the devil” because that implies that such decisions are always easy. Difficulty is the heart of ethics, and why all systems that try to guide all behavior fail….