Huffington Post: Is Cornwall Alliance Responsible for Death of Environmentalism in America?

Enviro Scholar Robert Cabin Sees Cornwall’s Efforts as Fueling Decline in Public Concern about Eco-Catastrophe

by E. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman, The Cornwall Alliance

Robert Cabin’s article ”Thank God Environmentalism Is Dead” Wednesday, May 18, in the Huffington Post is the latest in a string of articles by Leftwing journalists and bloggers showing that they believe Cornwall Alliance’s critiques of the environmental movement, particularly our Resisting the Green Dragon videos and book, are fueling the decline in American public concern about eco-catastrophe.

Cabin, professor of ecology and environmental science at Brevard College, writes, “A recent Gallup poll found ‘historically low levels of public worry about environmental problems,’ and more than a third of those polled believe the environmental movement ‘has done more harm than good.’”

“Once upon a time,” he continues, “Americans responded to environmental disasters by passing landmark laws like the Clean Air Act. Now it seems our support for the environment decreases with each new oil spill. What happened?”

The major cause, he’s convinced, is “the rising influence of the Christian Right, which appears to have helped convince an increasing number of Americans that there is no need to worry about urgent environmental problems such as climate change because ‘God has the reins, and He will save us.’" (Of course that caricature of our reasoning grossly misrepresents and oversimplifies, but who’s looking for reasonable discourse in this conversation?)

And what’s the biggest threat to environmentalism on the Christian Right?

The doubts about eco-catastrophe are “skillfully nurtured and inflamed,” Cabin writes, “by some powerful evangelical Christian organizations and their often well-heeled allies. For example, as detailed in a Huffington Post blog last December, several conservative Christian leaders recently joined with the Cornwall Alliance to promote Resisting The Green Dragon, a 12-part DVD series featuring prominent religious leaders bashing the environmental movement for ‘seducing and scaring’ our children and ‘trumpeting exaggerations and myths.’ They and other Christian Right leaders also accuse environmentalists of ‘worshiping the creation rather than the Creator’ and believing that humans should ‘serve the earth rather than the other way around.’ Another recent article noted that the Cornwall Alliance, Focus on the Family and other conservative groups are now pushing Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death, a new book about environmentalists' ‘anti-human’ and ‘anti-Christian’ philosophies.”

Cabin’s article is just the most recent in a growing number that have recognized that Cornwall Alliance’s Resisting the Green Dragon—both the videos and the book—are a serious threat to the Green juggernaut. Some assert that our portrayal of the environmental movement as religious and a threat to historic, orthodox Christianity misrepresents environmentalism.

But one of the world’s foremost scholars on religious environmentalism, Dr. Bron Taylor, though a Dark Green Religionist himself, begged to differ, writing—in Huffington Post of all places:

Progressives may ridicule those who claim that there is now a cultural ‘War on Christmas’ but Christian conservatives do have reason to worry. They know that their cultural influence has been waning, and that those with evolutionary and ecological worldviews are growing in number and influence. A DVD series released by a group of conservative Christians entitled “Resisting the Green Dragon,” provides one recent example of such fears. These fears are based on an accurate perception that there is a religious dimension to much environmentalism. Those expressing such fears understand, accurately, that those engaged in nature-based spiritualities, both overtly and in subtle ways, are converting many to an evolutionary worldview and an environmentalist spirituality and ethics. They know that this is one reason they are having trouble even keeping their own children in the fold. [emphases added]

Clearly, the Cornwall Alliance and Resisting the Green Dragon are having an impact. The video series got its public introduction on Fox New Channel’s Glenn Beck October 15, 2010. Now that the book’s been out for a few months, too, the Greens are more upset than ever.

But temper tantrums are no substitute for reasoned argument. The facts are there, as documented in the videos and the book (with its 645 source notes!). If some environmentalists don’t want environmentalism characterized as religious, and specifically anti-Christian, perhaps they should renounce the atheistic, pantheistic, panentheistic, and animistic views of their fellow environmentalists. It might do their movement good for them to clean their own house before throwing stones at their critics.

Resisting the Green Dragon’s influence is large and growing. We’d like to provide free copies to thousands of churches. Your donation today can help us do that. And if you don’t already own both the videos and the book, order by June 15, using discount code “cabin,” and you’ll get a 25 percent discount. (Discount not available through Amazon.com.)

Cargo Cult Science - Exposed

Physicist and educator Dr. James Wanliss, author of the Cornwall Alliance’s book Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death, speaks on how science is often abused as a political tool, rather than appreciated for what it is: a powerful method to describe how our world works. He offers a Biblical critique of the motivations and 'cargo cult science' driving the modern environmental movement, and examines the philosophical and spiritual pillars and costs of 'going green'.

Recent Significant Developments

Science & Ecology

Eco-scare-monger Bill McKibben Blames Joplin Tornado on Global Warming; Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer Explains Why It Isn't So--And Can't Be
Bill McKibben, darling of environmentalists worldwide, wants you to believe the tornado that hit Joplin last month, and those that hit Tuscaloosa and other parts of the South the month before, are the spawn of anthropogenic global warming. McKibben, whose bios at his website and at Middlebury College list no earned degrees (but lots of honorary ones), is a self-educated environmentalist without degrees in meteorology or climatology, the relevant science to understand the causes of tornadoes. Unfortunately for him, as Dr. Roy W. Spencer, a meteorologist/climatologist, explains, the reality is the opposite: “a greater number of strong to violent tornadoes occur in unusually COOL years, not warm years.” Why? “1) The missing ingredient for tornado formation is not a lack of warm moist air, but a lack of synoptic (large) scale wind shear" [an increase in wind speed with height, and a change in wind direction with height”],” which is necessary to produce rotating wind; and “2) At least until recently, the positive phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) which has predominated since the late 1970’s has suppressed strong tornado activity.” The positive phase of the PDO, which correlates with warmer years, causes less wind shear, leading to fewer and weaker tornadoes. In the Wall Street Journal, economist Donald Boudreaux, after pointing out that the number of severe weather-related deaths has, contrary to McKIbben’s suggestions, been declining, not rising, while the Earth warms, challenges McKibben (or anyone else) to a $10,000 bet that they’ll continue declining for the next 20 years.

The Myth of Killer Mercury (Willie Soon and Paul Driessen; The Wall Street Journal)
"The Environmental Protection Agency recently issued 946 pages of new rules requiring that U.S. power plants sharply reduce their (already low) emissions of mercury and other air pollutants. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson claims that while the regulations will cost electricity producers $10.9 billion annually, they will save 17,000 lives and generate up to $140 billion in health benefits. There is no factual basis for these assertions."

Economics & Energy

On the Road to Rio+20 (Peter Foster; Financial Post)
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development “has now become a full-blown advocate of ‘sustainable development,’ which is code for an anti-market ideology of less freedom and more bureaucratic control of the industries the Marshall Plan promoted. Sustainable development was given its imprimatur by the United Nations-based, and socialist-packed, Brundtland Commission, which led to the mammoth 1992 UN environmental and development conference at Rio. Out of Rio emerged, among many other interventionist initiatives, the Kyoto Accord to control climate by restricting industrial output, and thus growth and jobs. The OECD’s new sustainable orientation is confirmed by a report released this week on ‘Green Growth’ (along with a ‘Better Life Index,’ whose ideological slant was dissected in this space yesterday by William Watson). The report, and adjunct documents, propose ever-expanding bureaucratic co-ordination and monitoring of economic development at every level. However, there are major problems with this rationalist Utopia.”

Natural Gas a Natural Winner? Let the (Transportation) Market Decide! (E. Calvin Beisner; MasterResource.org)
Government subsidies were not necessary to get American drivers to substitute clean gasoline-burning cars for dirty hay-burning horses; none should be needed to get them to substitute to another cheaper, cleaner alternative.

Religion & Ethics

Gulag Night: Eco-Fascism Guests William Kay & Mark Musser (Audio)
Fascinating discussion of the deep, long-lasting, and wide ties between ecologism and fascism, with William Kay of Ecofascism.com, and Rev. Mark Musser, author of Nazi Oaks: The Green Sacrificial Offering of the Judeo-Christian Worldview in the Holocaust.

Manhattan Moment: Rex and Jeff Illustrate Washington's Gas-Price Hypocrisy (Robert Bryce; The Washington Examiner)
Energy company A had first-quarter 2011 profits of $10.65 billion, paid $1.6 billion in taxes and another $8.2 billion in royalties to the federal government in 2010, and paid its CEO $21 million. Energy company B had first-quarter 2011 profits of $3.6 billion, paid zero in taxes in 2010, got a $1.1 billion loan guarantee from the federal government that ensures that its 11 percent investment in a wind-farm project will make a return of 30 percent, and paid its CEO $19.6 million. Guess which company’s CEO sits on President Obama’s kitchen cabinet? Comparing the administration’s treatment of the two companies is an eye-opening exercise in recognizing hypocrisy, and political cronyism, in action.

Law, Regulation, & Litigation

Silence from Pressure Groups Deafening; Media Joins Hypocrisy (Christopher Horner and Paul Chesser; American Tradition Institute)
Two state-funded universities in Virginia, both subject to the same Freedom of Information Act, handle two nearly identical requests for former faculty members’ documents in diametrically opposite ways. One former faculty member is a global warming alarmist, the other a critic. Guess which one’s documents were handed over quickly and without resistance—and which one’s documents are being shielded by every conceivable subterfuge. The Washington Post editorializes, contrary to its usual insistence on public access to government-funded documents, in favor of one university’s concealing one professor’s documents, but ignores the other university’s immediately turning over the other professor’s documents Alan Caruba and Steve Milloy nail the hypocrisy.

The Problems with Precaution: A Principle Without Principle (Jonathan Adler; The American)
“’Better safe than sorry’ isn’t always safer. In fact, when it comes to policies to protect public health and the environment, this type of thinking could harm us. … Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, who currently serves as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, is particularly harsh in assessing the precautionary principle. According to Sunstein, ‘The precautionary principle, for all its rhetorical appeal, is deeply incoherent. It is of course true that we should take precautions against some speculative dangers. But there are always risks on both sides of a decision; inaction can bring danger, but so can action. Precautions, in other words, themselves create risks—and hence the principle bans what it simultaneously requires.’”

Politics & Debate

High Level Climate Finance: The Key to Global Governance (Dennis Ambler; Science and Public Policy Institute)
The annual “Conference of the Parties” of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change is just the tip of the iceberg of wheeling and dealing that goes on all year round, involving massive amounts of money and enormous concentrations of power.

Climate Models Go Cold (David Evans; Financial Post)
A good summary of some of the most basic problems with alarmism over global warming—by a former alarmist.

Meet the Critics: Zbigniew Jaworowski, Ph.D.

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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