by E. Calvin Beisner
Dr. Peter Jones explained in the first of his two lectures for
the role of leading representatives of New Age and revived Gnostic and pagan movements in shaping the environmental understanding promoted by the United Nations and many of the world’s governments.
Eco-spirituality leaders like Thomas Berry, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and Stephen C. Rockefeller all were instrumental in framing, in cooperation with Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong, the “
Berry, as Jones points out in his latest book,
One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference, is a disciple of the late heterodox Roman Catholic theologian
Teilhard de Chardin, a pantheist and process theologian who believed all reality is evolving toward an “Omega Point.” Berry, Jones reports, has “called for a new pattern of human presence on the planet, what he called ‘our great work.’ This work is to ‘rediscover the spirituality of the ancient peoples’.” Says Berry, “We need to move from a spirituality of the divine as revealed in verbal revelation to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world around us. … Genesis has nothing significant to communicate.”
Tucker, a student of Berry, leading figure in international ideological paganism, and Senior Lecturer and Senior Scholar at Yale University in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as the Divinity School and Department of Religious Studies, is co-founder and co-director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology. Tucker boasts that eco-spiritualists like herself are “infiltrating constantly” U.N. departments that deal with the environment. She says Berry’s understanding is enshrined in the Earth Charter.
Rockefeller (of the wealthy American family), wrote
John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (1991), co-edited
The Christ and the Bodhisattva (1987), and hosted a symposium, “Spirit and Nature: Religion, Ethics, and Environmental Crisis” while Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, the papers from which were published as
Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment Is a Religious Issue (1992). That volume begins with an epigram from
Seng-t’san: “One thing is all, / All things are one— / Know this and / All’s whole and complete”—a concise statement of the monist worldview at the heart of pagan environmentalism.
In one of his papers, Rockefeller asserts that the “myth of the Fall describes the emergence of self-consciousness and the ego …. The growth of the ego,” he continues—in keeping with the monistic worldview— “makes possible the separation of subject and object …. It also involves the disruption of an original harmony of the self with nature, other persons, God, and itself” (pp. 153–4). Later he adds, “A holistic and relational view of the human self suggests that in a real sense the whole earth is a person’s extended body and the consciousness of the individual is a focal point of the earth’s emerging self-consciousness” (p. 165).
Animistic peoples were thrilled with the Earth Charter, whose supporters want it to become a
de facto precedent-setting source of global law, says Jones.
“The Earth Charter is not a manifesto written by secular humanist atheists, nor even by neutral policy wonks, to please everybody,” says Jones. “It is a religious statement of cosmolatry, the worship, the false, idolatrous worship of the Earth.”
Resisting the Green Dragon exposes the pagan roots of much modern environmentalism while explaining proper, Biblical Earth stewardship.
Dr. Peter Jones to Discuss Radical Eco-Religion on Radio
Dr. Peter Jones, who delivered two lectures for
Resisting the Green Dragon, will discuss radical eco-religion with host Rev. Kevin M. Boling, Pastor of Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship, Travelers Rest, SC, on
Knowing the Truth, Christian Talk 660 AM and 92.9 FM in Greenville, SC, Wednesday, January 26, 1:30-2 p.m. EST. The program also broadcasts live nationally via
webcast on SermonAudio.com.
Recent Significant Developments
Science & Ecology
December 2010: A December to Remember (Joe D'Aleo and Art Horn; Science and Public Policy Institute)
"The Central England Temperature record is one of the longest continuous temperature records in the world extending back to the Little Ice age in 1659. December 2010 was the Second Coldest December Temperature in the entire record (352 years) with an average of -0.7C just short of the record of -0.8C recorded in December 1890." Record colds prevailed in many other regions, too.
What caused it? "Tony Barnston,
lead forecaster at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, said two phenomena–La Niña and the North Atlantic Oscillation–are likely responsible for the patterns we’re seeing."
Responses to Trenberth's AMS Bible (Eschenbach, Motl & McIntyre; Science and Public Policy Institute)
The corruption of scientific process by global warming alarmists—this time Dr. Kevin Trenberth in a speech to the American Meteorological Society—continues, and gets properly chastened here by three insightful critics. Sample from Willis Eschenbach’s analysis: “For Dr. Trenberth to call for the usual null hypothesis (which is that what we observe in nature is, you know, natural) to be reversed, citing as his evidence the IPCC statement that the earth is actually warming, is nonsense. However, it is not meaningless nonsense. It is pernicious, insidious, and dangerous nonsense.” That’s strong language from a scientist.
Economics & Energy
Solar Power Eclipse (
The Wall Street Journal)
Green energy and green jobs—now you see ‘em, now you don’t. Too bad we can’t also say, “Easy come, easy go.” The waste—the lost opportunity cost—is real and permanent. The invariable flops of subsidized “green energy” (as in
Germany) and “green jobs” programs (as in
Spain) suggest a new law of economics: What must be subsidized will come back to bite you in the end. Oh, but that law already exists in other words: TANSTAAFL: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Amber Waves of Ethanol (
The Wall Street Journal)
What a great idea! Feed fat agribusiness here in the U.S., starve the poor around the world! Why didn’t WE think of that?
Religion & Ethics
Keeping the Global Warming Faith (Jeff Walton; The Institute on Religion and Democracy)
Even as the science for apocalyptic, human induced global warming continues to implode, the Religious Left is keeping faith.
How it Works: Drive up Food Prices by Demanding Biofuel, Then Blame it on Global Warming (Haunting the Library)
So, let’s spell it out. Here’s what’s happened: 1) Gore and other global warming cheerleaders push for biofuels. 2) America and EU mandate targets for biofuel use. 3) Quarter of corn production goes to fuel use, prices skyrocket. 4) NGO’s issue report blaming global warming and overpopulation. 5) The media repeat this line without investigation or even reading the report properly. And these are the people who believe that they know how to save the world. … They’ve driven up the price of food in a way even the UN calls “criminal” and then they turn around and say its global warming and overpopulation.
Law, Regulation, & Litigation
"EPA Expands Climate Agenda to the Current Fleet of Power Plants and Refineries" –VanNess Feldman (Marlo Lewis; Globalwarming.org)
“EPA, in cahoots with the usual pro-Kyoto State attorneys general and eco-litigation groups, is engaged in an
end-run around democracy. The Clean Air Act … does not even mention ‘greenhouse gases’ …. The Act as amended in 1990 [includes] a caveat instructing EPA not to jump to regulatory conclusions. That admonitory language would have no legal effect, and would have been pointless for Congress to include, if … the agency has separate authority under other provisions to ‘enact’ regulatory global warming policy.
Put Up or Shut Up on Global Warming (
The Orange County Register)
It’s time for transparency, accountability, and house cleaning in tax-funded global warming research.
EPA is a No-Show in Texas Fracking Case (Chris Tucker;
The Washington Examiner)
EPA fines natural gas producer for polluting water wells—but can’t prove the producer caused the pollution.
Politics & Debate
Pooling Our Sovereignty With Others Only Undermines It (John Bolton;
The Washington Examiner)
Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton explains the threats to the American Constitutional order—government by “we the people”—from increasing global and international law, including environmental (especially climate) regulation. For more on how environmentalism promotes global governance, view “Threats to Liberty and the Move Toward a Global Government,” part ten of the twelve-part DVD series
Resisting the Green Dragon.
"Environmental Justice" Undermines Obama's Regulatory Reform (Daniel Popeo;
The Washington Examiner)
This radical theory [of environmental justice] melds controversial racial discrimination concepts and environmental law. It allows federal bureaucrats and activists to allege discrimination if a business' otherwise lawful air, water, or other emissions have a "disparate impact" on minority or lower-income communities.
75 Climate Scientists Think Humans Contribute to Global Warming (Lawrence Solomon;
National Post)
How global warming alarmists cook the numbers—not, this time, about climate (though they do that), but about the mythical “scientific consensus” supporting belief in catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming.
Landmark Documents from the Cornwall Alliance
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., Founder and National Spokesman
Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation
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