Green campaigners are not ‘following the science’ – they are promoting a Biblical fantasy.
Apocalypticism may have developed hand-in-hand with religion and Christianity in particular. But it has persisted as a mode of thinking among certain sections of society, even as Christianity’s influence has waned. Indeed, as societies have become more secular, so apocalyptic thinking has become more secular, too.
We see this today, above all, in the case of environmentalism. For it’s there that apocalyptic projections and predictions are now most at home. Greenism shares with its Biblical precursor an obsession with days of judgement, with vengeance upon the wicked and the dream of a redeemed world. But there’s a vital difference between the Biblical apocalypse and its green iteration. Those to be judged today are not a portion of sinful humanity. No, they are all of humanity. And the redeemed world dreamt of by climate activists is not the kingdom of God promised by earlier apocalyptic narratives. Instead, it is a kingdom of nature, and it is distinctly opposed to humanity. In short, the green End Times amount to a very anti-human apocalypse.
At the forefront of the arms race in catastrophic prophecies is Extinction Rebellion. Every page on its website itemises the scale of the climate crisis, and the dire impact that human development supposedly has on life on Earth. The extinction referred to in the movement’s title does not just include wildlife, but humanity itself. Activists claim that our extinction is just a generation away.
Here is a literally hopeless creed.
