Going Green or Seeing Red

Someone hijacked my love for the environment…

Like the two grungy people who confronted me on a Pasadena sidewalk yesterday. “Would you like to save a polar bear?” she asked, brushing back her dreadlocks. I glanced at a donation box with a Greenpeace sticker on it. Unable to concoct something more biting, I simply said, “Not interested.” She quickly snapped, “Would you like to save a thousand polar bears?”

It’s ironic how the same people who will fight tooth and nail against polar bear extinction, dismiss the legalized abortion of millions of human beings.

Yes. I like polar bears… and penguins, seals, spotted owls, and Delhi Sands Flower-loving Flies. It’s the hypocrisy of these new environmentalists that I dislike.

Maybe that’s why Earth Day seems so misguided. On its surface, Earth Day is a practical reminder to be good stewards of the planet. This precept, however, did not originate with Al Gore or the United Nations. It is rooted in the first two chapters of the Bible. Adam was the first true environmentalist, set to tilling virgin earth in Eden. But nowadays, Adam’s role has been abdicated to pagans and politicians, both of whom are driven by unbiblical tenets.

It’s been said that when Man rejects God, he does not believe in nothing, he believes in anything. The Green Movement has that feel to me — the feel of a religion, with something other than God at its center. So maybe it’s no surprise that some celebrate Earth Day as Pagan Day. Contemporary environmentalism has bounced God in favor of Nature, deified the Planet along with its inhabitants.

And just like any good religion, Earth Day offers its own confessional checklist. Like these suggestions offered by one Wiccan adherent:

• Turn off the lights you’re not using
• Pick up some garbage that isn’t yours
• Ride a bike to work instead of driving
• Plant a tree
• Use cloth grocery bags instead of paper or plastic
• Recycle your stuff
• Plant a garden of your own, or buy from local growers
• Build a birdhouse
• Adopt a stream
• Shut off appliances that don’t have to be on all the time

Why waste my time loving my neighbor as myself when I can build a birdhouse? Who knew that penance could be so easy?

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But underneath the plant-a-tree / save-the-planet feel-goodism of Earth Day, lurks a more insidious agenda. As Bradley Doucet writes in Why On Earth are We So Worried About the Planet?

At their worst,  environmentalists do not merely lack confidence in our ability to solve our problems and fail to analyze costs and benefits. At the most extreme, they are positively against technological progress. They are not just against the pollution caused by cars; they are against cars. They not only favor energy-saving light bulbs; they favor turning out the lights. They do not merely criticize the ills that accompany our civilization; they criticize civilization itself.

In this new environmental religion, we are the bad guys. Fossil fuels and electric light bulbs are the fruits of our sins. Global warming and dwindling condor populations are our chastisement. Cars, factories, and plasma TVs are the implements of our torture. George Bush is Beelzebub and Al Gore is the Messiah. Recycling is our redemption. And Earth Day is the altar where the Kool Aid of this paganism is distributed.

Hey, I’m all for saving polar bears and reducing plastics. But when you start worshipping Earth, I’m more inclined to see red, than go green.