In the face of tragedy and loss it is natural that people ask, "Why?" and to question the ways of God — or to wonder if God even exists. Indeed, it is a distinguishing feature of man that he ponders and anguishes over the seemingly pointless nature of disasters, untimely death, and sudden destruction. And while there is good theological ink spilled on the topic, at times it is best to avoid quick, tidy answers and to quietly reflect on the fragility and mystery of our existence — and pray for those who are suffering and dying.
Sadly, it seems almost inevitable that in the destructive wake of Hurricane Katrina there would be people who would use the horrific situation on the Gulf Coast to promote their religious and political agendas. But who would have thought that some would manage to do both? Yet the most popular apocalyptic movement of our time, Radical Environmentalism, has done just that. Like most modern apocalyptic movements, Radical Environmentalism uses a combination of doom and gloom, conspiracy theories, paranoa, emotional manipulation, and self-righteous posturing. For example, the online British magazine Spiked says this about what it calls a "putrid deluge" of this apocalyptic vision:
Those who insist that Hurricane Katrina was caused by man-made global warming rushed on to the scene almost faster than the flood waters. Sir David King, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, said that 'it is easy to conclude that the increased intensity of hurricanes is associated with global warming'. Others were blunter. 'The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Servic', opined one writer in the Boston Globe. 'It's real name is global warming.'
The author, Mick Hume, continues:
One Green German government minister was quick to claim that, 'The American president has closed his eyes to the economic and human damage that natural catastrophes such as Katrina - in other words, disasters caused by a lack of climate protection measures - can visit on his country' (3). If only that fool Bush had signed the Kyoto Treaty, the message seemed to be, it could have turned back the tide. The British newsreader Jon Snow, bicycling conscience of the liberal intelligentsia, went further in his daily email trailing Channel 4 news. 'How ironic', it said on Tuesday, 'that the world's number one polluter is now reaping the "rewards" that so many have warned would flow....'. It seems that some who would mock the religious right or Islamic fundamentalists for claiming Katrina as God's vengeance on sinful New Orleans are happy to indulge the equally misanthropic superstitious notion that it is nature's revenge on greedy, fat Americans. How ironic, as a smug git in a cycle helmet might say.
On this side of the Atlantic, NRO's Jonah Goldberg, after providing examples of similar hysteria and irresponsible blame gaming, writes:
It's become something of a cliche to say that environmentalism has become a religion, but that's because there's something so obviously true about it. The cant, the ritual, the creation myths all feel more religious than scientific. Within the environmentalist worldview there's "an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all," observed Michael Crichton in a famous speech on the subject.
Secular, "scientific" liberals understandably titter at televangelists who pray away hurricanes or claim that this or that calamity is God's retribution. But as unpersuasive or unhelpful as much of that theater may be, there's at least a serious theology somewhere underneath all the posing. Save for the cults of "deep ecology" and Wicca, environmental theology seems slapdash.
They could start by getting their own theodicy, one that would try to reconcile natural disasters with their faith that Mother Nature is such a nice lady. Rejecting Tennyson's description of nature as "red in tooth and claw," they opt for a nurturing but wounded mommy nature. Were it not for man's folly, she would be rocking us to sleep in her gentle arms every night. God, it seems, is a deadbeat dad in this whole scheme, and man ultimately has all the power. Indeed, George Bush (with the aid of Haley Barbour, of course) could eliminate catastrophes with the stroke of a pen.
Goldberg touches on something that is apparent in some of the reports that are being aired or written about New Orleans and the surrounding areas: the need, either implicit or explicit, to blame someone — anyone! — for what has happened (After all, would Mother Nature really do something like this without being provokes?). He also makes the excellent point that many people today really do believe that nature/Nature is not brutish and violent, but is fully bucolic bliss, gentle wonder, and rapturous harmony. This is what Bruce S. Thornton, professor of Classics and Humanities and author of Plagues of the Mind (ISI) calls "romantic environmentalism." Thornton writes:
The central fallacy of environmentalism is its distortion of the relationship of humans to nature, and its projections of human values and concerns onto an amoral material world. Environmentalists speak as though we were "natural" creatures somehow fallen from our once happy home into an artificial exile of civlization. ... What makes us recognizably human ... is not what is natural about us but what is unnatural: reason and its projections in language, culture, ritual, and technology; self-awareness, concious memory, imagnation, and the higher emotions; and, most important, values, ethics, morals, and the freedom from nature's determinism that allow us to choose, whether for good or ill. Nothing else in nature possesses any of these attributes... (Plagues of the Mind, 95, 96).
And there is the key point: man cannot control nature entirely, but he can choose to do good or ill in the face of natural disaster, tragedy, and sudden upheaval. Yes, there are many real victims of Hurricane Katrina. But humans should never settle, in the long run, for being victims. And they certainly shouldn't try to find ways to be victims. Unfortunately, movements such as Radical Environmentalism think otherwise and therefore demean virtue and what it means to be human.
Junk science in periodicals edited by incompetents. Dreadful combo.
Posted by: Ed Peters | Saturday, September 03, 2005 at 12:12 PM
Well, I'm not a scientist, but from what I've read and from the real -- not junk -- scientists I've spoken too, the scientific consensus of at least the large majority seems to be that global warming is real, ongoing and mostly caused by human activity, and that due to global warming hurricanes are going to be and become on average more violent and destructive.
Now, if I say all that I don't have to imagine Nature as injured Mommy gone from nurturing to vengeful. I know there have always been hurricanes. I just believe that human activity has brought it about that in the future they will be more violent. I don't think that this is some sort of punishment, just a natural but unforeseen consequence of our actions.
Now, suppose I'm right. Then doesn't it follow that we should undertake things like reducing CO2 emissions? Isn't that mere prudence? Do I have to be a religiously radical environmentalist to think this? (Guess what -- I'm not -- as you can guess since I read this blog, I'm a Catholic of the ordinary sort.)
Posted by: Michael Kremer | Wednesday, September 07, 2005 at 11:42 AM
While I'm no fan of radical environmentalism, one doesn't need to be a radical environmentalist to acknowledge the sound science supporting the link between man-made pollutants and global warming. One consequence of global warming, recognizned by most climatologists, is an increase in the severity of storms, such as Hurricane Katrina. This suggests a causal link between the policies we, as participants in a democracy, adopt to curb CO2 emissions and the destructivness of storms (never mind the myriad other consequences of global warming).
Moreover, it is not anti-Catholic to be a good steward of the environment. Your piece suggests this, albeit subtly. Our Catechism, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the US Conference of Bishops each call on us to be good stewards of the environment. . Like the respondant above, I, too, am a Catholic of the ordinary sort, and not quick to bear false witness by proclaiming thousands of scientists to be purveyors of "junk science."
Posted by: Heath Prince | Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 06:29 AM
The problem with the assertions made by the previous two writers is that there isn't any compelling evidence that global warming is causing more and more intense recent hurricaine activity. For example, cyclonic storm activity in the Pacific has actually decreased in the last few years, and if global warming were causing more storm activity, shouldn't the effects be global? It should also be noted that most of the strongest storms recorded in the 20th century occurred in the first half of the century; if global warming due to anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases were the cause, shouldn't we have seen the strongest storms in the latter part of the last century?
This isn't to say that global warming isn't contributing to recent increased storm activity, but the theory that it's the major cause fails all the tests. Responsible climate scientists know this, but saying that increased storm activity is due to, for example, a cyclical change in the ocean current flow in the north Atlantic (one of the more popular theories) just doesn't sell as many newspapers as does the spectre of global warming. That's why the publicity hounds push global warming, although by doing so they present another example of scientists drawing conclusions far beyond what the data actually support.
Posted by: Jonathan Sadow | Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 07:57 PM
Hurricanes come and go in cycles, and we are just finishing an exceptionally mild period of about 20 years. The climatologists who study hurricanes do not attribute the increasing severity of recent hurricanes to global warming but to the actions of this cycle of nature. Actually, four of the five strongest storms of the last hundred years happened more than twenty years ago.
The warming that we now see in the climate of the earth may also be part of a natural cycle, and this concept is far more common among climatologists than the media would lead us to believe. No one really knows for sure how much warming is caused by human activity and how much is caused by other factors in the earth's climate. For example, several hundred years ago, Europe went through a "little ice age." Some hundreds of years before that, there was a significant warming trend that had wine grapes growing far to the north of where they can grow now and that caused colonies to be started in Greenland--colonies that later died out because of the cooling trend. Neither of these changes in climate was caused by industrial activity or CO2 in the atmosphere!
The Kyoto Protocol would severely restrict our CO2 emissions--and our economic growth--but it would not restrict emissions from developing countries which are now producing record amounts of pollutants. There is doubt whether Kyoto would do any good, since large amounts of new pollution would be allowed under the treaty and since the science behind the concept of human-made global warming is actually in doubt. Yes, climatologists actually disagree about the origins of global warming. Moreover, a single volcanic eruption can make the manmade greenhouse gases look insignificant!
There is nothing virtuous or particularly Catholic or Christian about acting without sufficient evidence, and there is nothing morally wrong about taking the time to verify the data.
Posted by: Jeannine McDevitt | Tuesday, September 13, 2005 at 08:09 PM
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