G.K. Chesterton once said,

“The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists.”

G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

This is the reason why it is so important to sound the alarm about the radical climate change cult that has been taking over the Western world. In some ways, it may already be too late. Secular governments and globalist elites have been using the fearmongering over a coming climate apocalypse to put laws and policies in place that are contrary to God’s revelation, would severely affect our freedoms and reward or punish behaviours based on their own ‘moral’ code. Ultimately, the climate change cult ends up creating a conveniently altruistic-sounding excuse for putting in place mechanisms of control in the name of “saving the planet” from a fictional threat.

Truly, the worst of tyrannies is that which is cloaked in the name of the common good and your best interest. However, Christians especially must be able to see this threat clearly and think Biblically about the issues.¹As an upfront note before I jump in, I owe a lot of the content of this article/episode to the work of Dr. Joe Boot, Dr. Aaron Rock and Andre Schuten. The thoughts and insights of these men on this topic has been hugely influential and helpful to me. Much of what is presented here is simply a distillation of their work and the work of many others far wiser and more intelligent than me.

While many Christians are either ignorant or apathetic about the climate change deboggle, thinking that it doesn’t concern them or their faith, there are many reasons why a Biblical worldview compels us to wrestle honestly with this issue.

Psalm 148 calls for all of creation, heavenly beings, the stars, moon and sun, the material elements, all the creatures, landscapes and people of all kinds, to praise the Name of the LORD.

“Let them praise the name of the Lord!
For he commanded and they were created.
And he established them forever and ever;
he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away.”

Psalm 148:5–6

Sometimes, we as Christians can have a type of Gnostic spirituality that disregards the physical universe God created in exchange for an overemphasis on the “spiritual”—meaning the non-material aspects of life and piety. Yet this is not the type of “spirituality” we are called to as Christians and stewards of God’s creation. Even the care of the natural order is part of our religious duty to God as His vice-gerants over creation. We were made to have dominion by subduing the creation to make it flourish.

Ironically, although many Christians have lost this religious vision for the stewardship of the environment, the pagans have not. The old paganism worshipped the elements of nature explicitly, today’s neo-paganism of our supposedly secularized cultures does so implicitly. Today’s neo-paganism continues to fulfill what Romans 1 states plainly as the exchange of the worship of the Creator for the created. Thus, we should not be surprised by our modern cults of Radical Environmentalism and false prophets of Apocalyptic Climate Doomsday scenarios which tend to have a religious fervor to them.

However, God has set creation in order and in a way that it will not pass away.

In Romans 8, Paul states that the creation itself will be renewed/rescued from its bondage to futility through the revealing of the sons of God. This means that as the Gospel advances and mens’ hearts are regenerated and renewed, they take that spiritual redemption out into the physical world also. Christians with a Biblical worldview and vision of true godly dominion and stewardship will redeem the creation that has been subjected to futility as agents of God’s redeeming work in all things.

People with redeemed hearts, go out and redeem other things.

That much should not be rocket science. But, what we will cover in this article may shock and surprise some of you, and for others may help to make sense of the craziness you’ve already noticed.

In this article, we’ll take a look at:

• a bit of the story of how the climate change agenda got to where we are today
• whether climate change is actually a big deal with some real world examples
• the difference between legitimate ecological care vs cultic environmentalism
• how climate change is being used to increase the Nanny State and further a neo-Marxist agenda with contemporary examples of laws in place today
• and finally, expose the anti-Gospel cultic nature of Radical Climate Change ideology and how it subverts a Christian worldview.

So, buckle up. It’s going to be quite the ride.

You can use the Table of Contents below to navigate through the sections.

So How Did We Get Here?

How is it that a young girl with aspergers, Greta Thunberg, can become an international sensation and authority on the supposed “climate emergency” moving masses to activism and support because of a belief in the impending doom of humanity? How is it that so many have bought into the current narrative and alarmism of catastrophic climate change?

It didn’t happen by accident.

In 2016, a poll found that in the UK and US, 65% of people were pessimistic about the future (before the COVID19 pandemic and subsequent economic devastation). In 2019, another poll found that almost half of the world’s population believed that climate change would lead to human extinction. A survey in the Washington Post in 2019 showed that in teenagers, over half of them were angry and afraid about climate change and 42% felt personally guilty about it. Many of GenZ share apocalyptic views of the future.

So, we should pay attention because this is no small issue in the minds of the next generation.

This belief in catastrophic climate change has taken deep roots in the current and next generation through schools and media. The rhetoric used to talk about climate change has become increasingly more extreme and less tied to the actual data. Even though climate scientists have painstakingly studied climate change and now have more reliable data, over the past twenty years the rhetoric from public commentators and media has become more unhinged and irrational. 

As author, Bjørn Lomborg writes in his book “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet” dispelling some of the myths,

“Conventional wisdom, repeated ad nauseam in the media, is that we have only until 2030 to solve the problem of climate change… But this is not what science tells us. It’s what politics tells us. This deadline came from politicians asking scientists a very specific and hypothetical question: basically, what will it take to keep climate change below an almost impossible target?”

Lomborg, False Alarm, 7

What makes this book unique is that Lomborg makes his case compellingly using data from the UN’s official International Panel on Climate Change as well as other major accepted scholarly sources. So, he’s not using “spurious” sources. The UN climate panel itself stated that,

““For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers [such as] changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic developments.” 

IPCC, 2014C, 662

Is Climate Change a Big Deal?

The earth’s temperature and climate has always been in some measure of flux. 

For example, according to a study reported on by Jonathan Chadwick on the DailyMail, the Mediterranean Sea was 3.6°F hotter during the time of the Roman Empire, which is the warmest it has been for the past 2000 years. Interestingly, the height of the Roman empire was during a warming phase and its fall coincided with cooling. This makes sense as warmer temperatures help with agricultural yields, something which hasn’t changed in 2000 years. It is simply better for growing conditions.

When put into historical and scientific context, much of the alarmism surrounding changing Global temperatures is simply the observation of fluctuations that have been happening for centuries. This does not mean that man’s actions have no impact on the climate, especially localized impact (e.g. polluting a river, etc). But the catastrophic nature of that impact can often be overplayed by pointing to these global trends without placing them in proper context.

The popular narrative put forward by most major news outlets to the public is that the 2018 report issued by UN climate scientists was urging the world to drastically cut emissions by 2030, with huge changes needed to keep global temperature rises below 1C. CNN said that the “Earth has 12 years to avert climate change catastrophe.”

However, the truth is that what actually happened was that 3 years earlier, the Paris Climate Change Conference leaders declared that they wanted to achieve that target. This was done at the urging of campaigners who wanted to demonstrate their willpower and ambition—not because the world’s scientists had come together to declare this arbitrary cut-off point. It was after they had already declared this target that the UN’s climate change scientists were asked to find out what it would take to achieve that ambitious target, which become the 2018 report.

As Lomborg notes,

“Simply put, politicians asked them what it would take to do the almost impossible, and the scientists responded that this would require almost impossible policies.”

Lomborg, False Alarm, 25

This sort of dramatic misrepresentation of claiming that we have only 12 years left is why children are striking from school, politicians are declaring “climate emergencies” and suggesting suspending democracy in the name of fighting climate change. It’s why there are ridiculous activists throwing soup and paint on priceless artwork or gluing themselves to the floor of museums and blocking traffic like chicken littles afraid of the sky falling on them. However, at root, it is because of unbelief and this vain human philosophy has even captured some Christians.

God created the earth with infinite possibility for growth as man cultivates it.

Fundamentally, for Christians, it comes down to this: do we believe that obedience to God’s command to cultivate the earth will result in apocalypse? Obviously not.

Thus, Satan’s response is to try to obstruct that stewardship as much as possible.

A Brief Timeline of Climate False Prophets

Perhaps it would be helpful to trace out a brief timeline for us.

The history of using climate doomsday predictions to stir up public support for their cause has a long and terrible track record. If more people knew about it, perhaps less would pay as much attention to the current doomsayers—who of couse reassure us that they’ve got it right this time! Those other times were just practice warm ups.

One of the pivotal moments was in 1968, when a group of academics, civil servants, and industrialists met in Rome to talk about the problems of the modern world—called the Club of Rome. In the same year, the book The Population Bomb argued that humanity would breed itself into oblivion through overpopulation. 

The Club of Rome was convinced that humanity was doomed because too many people would consume too much and the only hope was to stop economic growth, cut consumption, recycle, force people to have less children, and stabilize society at a much poorer level. The Club released a report called The Limits to Growth which used a computer simulation to predict that gold would run out by 1979, along with other important resources like aluminum, copper, lead, mercury, natural gas, oil, silver, tin, tungsten and zinc—all before 2004.

However, since 1946 all of those resources have become more available than before and prices have generally fallen. Oil was supposed to run out in 1990 according to their computer simulation, and natural gas in 1992. However, reserves for both are larger today even though we consume more!

We must remember that computer simulations are only as good as their framework and the data they’re fed. Garbage in, garbage out. However, the Club of Rome ultimately got it wildly wrong because they overlooked humanity’s ingenuity at adapting and innovating as we fulfill the creation mandate.

This didn’t stop the climate false prophets though.

In 1974, Time magazine published a story entitled “Another Ice Age?” And Science News had a cover showing glaciers overwhelming New York City in 1975. Many high-profile researchers promoted the fear of a catastrophic ice age in the 70’s. Many of the older generation would remember Lenard Nemoy, the actor famous for his portrayal of Spok in the old Star Trek series, in 1977 was in a documentary predicting that we’d be in an ice age right about now. In 1982, the UN predicted a planetary “devastation as complete, as irreversable as any nuclear holocaust” by the year 2000 due to climate change, ozone-layer depletion, acid rain, and desertification.

Seven years later in 1989, the head of the UN Environment Program warned that we only had three years to “win—or lose—the climate struggle.” The UN stated that “We all know that the world faces a threat potentially more catastrophic than any other threat in human history: climate change and global warming” and of course we’ve always been at war with Eurasia. Kudos if you got that Orwell reference.

In 2006, former US vice president, Al Gore estimated that within 10 years we would reach a point of no return unless drastic measures were taken to reduce greenhouse gases. In 2009, he was predicting that the polar ice caps would disappear in 5 years. How’s that going?

In 2019, the UK’s Prince (now king) Charles declared that we had only 18 months to fix climate change or it would be too late. But I guess COVID came to the rescue, right? Ten years earlier, the prince had told people that he had calculated that we only had 96 months to save the world. Must have forgot to carry the 1 after dividing by pi.

A June 2019 headline in New York magazine stated, “Meeting Paris Climate Goals Would Save Thousands of American Lives during Heat Waves: Study”. The 2019 study that the article was based on claimed that heat waves would claim a huge number of lives across fifteen US cities.

However, the study assumes that nobody in those cities will manage to do anything sensible, like purchasing an air conditioner for eight years! This is a common factor, that these alarmist studies often neglect to factor in even the most basic and common sense of human adaptation to changes in environmental conditions.

But the biggest problem is their lack of a Biblical worldview—more on that later.

A Misinformation War

We should all know that the media has a vested interest in creating the scariest headlines in order to get more clicks and views. The sad truth is that sensationalism sells. The alarming headlines help climate campaigners get attention and funding. Researchers who align themselves with helping to address these supposedly apocalyptic threats get more funding, attention and recognition. Politicians who emphasize scary scenarios get to position themselves as our saviours from the coming disaster and a convenient excuse to grab more power and control.

Nuance and level-headed analysis has little financial or social incentives apart from a greater desire to honour God and love your neighbour.

For example, the New York post ran an article with the title, “Climate Change Could End Human Civilization by 2050: Report”. You’d think that they would have some really compelling evidence to back up that.

However, the actual 2019 study that the article was based upon was only a filmsy seven pages long from an obscure think tank, and veers wildly from the accepted science of the United Nations climate panel. The report did not even set that date for the end of civilization—that was something the authors took the liberty to embelish.

Time magazine, in June 2019, ran a cover story with a provocative photo of the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, standing in a suit with water up to his thighs off the cost of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. The article warned that “rising seas threaten to submerge Tuvalu.” 

However, during the last 40 years, even though sea levels have risen, Tuvalu has actually seen its total land area increase by 2.9% due to the process of accretion. At the same time that sea levels were rising, old coral was broken up and washed onto low-lying shores which counteracted the reduction due to the rise. The 2018 research actually showed that accretion was overpowering erosion, leading to a net gain of land area in Tuvalu. A similar thing happened in two other island nations, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, where Time Magazine warned that they would be wiped off the map due to rising sea levels but both ended up seeing accretion increase of 3–4% of the land area over 30 years. In fact, all atolls studied in that region have increased in area, and all the larger islands studied either remained stable or increased in size.

But of course, those sorts of details don’t make for captivating headlines, nor do they make their way into the average classroom or textbook—so the average public won’t ever hear of it.

Ecological Care vs Religious Environmentalism

It should be clearly stated that creation care and the religious environmentalism of today’s Climate Cult are not the same thing. 

We are not saying that we should not be concerned about pollution and reforestation, etc. Christians should not be committed to pillaging God’s creation.

The Climate Cult stole God’s mandate and distorted it. (e.g. the humane societies for animals were originally started by Evangelical Christians) We must reclaim the godly vision for creation stewardship as Christians from a Biblical worldview that trusts God’s Word and design.

Something worthy to note is that you can only talk about creation care if you are not identical with it.

But pagan atheism conflates us with the creation as evolved apes. The Bible says that we are special in creation as the only ones bearing God’s image and given dominion. Thus, paganism turns into a rebellion against God’s distinctions within creation and purpose for creation—to care, tend, develop, subdue, etc. And this is what the current Climate Cult is—a return to a form of paganism. But more on that later.

God created everything so our rule is through God’s delegation. God’s Word equips us for this task in numerous ways. Here are just 4 examples:

1. God’s regard for birds – some of the smallest creatures (Deut. 22:6-7)
2. Respect for working animals (Prov. 12:10)
3. The principle of rest for arable land and animals (Exo. 23:12)
4. The preservation of fruit trees as the life of man (Deut. 20:19-20)

So, before Christians think that the Radical Environmentalism and Climate Change Cult of today have the monopoly on creation care—realize that this was part of God’s design and command for us in His Word.

The Call to Stewardship

Essentially, it boils down to a call to steward His creation. We see this in several area in the Bible:

• Genesis 2:15 – “to work it and keep it”- this is pre-Fall. Work is redemptive and recreational.
• Genesis 1:26 – “to have dominion over” – comprehensive dominion over the entire creation.
• Psalm 24:1-2 – “the earth is the Lord’s”- we are stewards of God’s earth
• Psalm 65:9-13 – “You visit… you greatly enrich it… you provide… you water… you crown the year…” – God’s intimate involvement with creation. He has not abandoned the world.

However, though superficially similar in some of the outward actions we may take to preserve the environment, the Climate Cult is fundamentally different to a Biblical vision of creation care.

Empty Virtue Signalling

The climate crisis is posed as an apocalypse and makes climate activism an act of altruism to save the world. This is why there is such self-righteousness in those supportive of the agenda and indignation against anyone who even raises a slight modicum of opposition or questioning the narrative.

The truth is that the vast majority of the actions individuals can take in service of reducing their emissions (especially those that are achievable without entirely disrupting everyday life) will make little practical difference. This is true even if all of us do them. The UK’s former chief climate science advisor, late David MacKay, once noted about people’s carbon-cutting efforts: “Don’t be distracted by the myth that ‘every little helps.’ If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little.”

Trendy vegan climate-friendly diets rely on cherry picked factoids to sound impressive. But when examined closely, reveal that they accomplish little more than making those who virtue signal with it feel better about themselves. Some have claimed that a vegan diet can reduce personal carbon emissons by 50% and vegetarianism by 20–35%. However, that’s not accurate. They only cut the percentage of food-related emissions for a person, which represents only a small fraction of their total carbon footprint. A thorough, systematic analysis shows that for the average person, eliminating meats from their diet only cuts personal emissions by 4.3% while depriving them of many important nutritional and health benefits which must be artificially supplemented.

As cool as Elon Musk’s Teslas are, electric cars don’t make as much as an impact as some might think. Definitely not “zero emissions” when all considered.

The International Energy Agency calculates that a standard gas-powered car emits about 34 tons of CO2 over a 10 year lifetime, including its production and disposal. For electric cars, given that in the most parts of the world, electricity is still generated using fossil fuels, and that their production is more energy intensive (especially for batteries)—electric cars with a reasonable long range will emit 24 tons of carbon over its lifetime. So, while it does cut emissions by 24%, it’s not “zero emissions”. Additionally, you need to also consider the cost of mining the lithium used for the batteries (where a lot of lithium mining utilizes child labour and hazardous work conditions), and the toxic waste disposal attached to batteries which fill landfills and pollute the ground. One has to consider if the net benefit of EVs is actually better than fuel-efficient gas options today.

Now, this is not to say that Christians should not care about Environmental Stewardship—we should! Nor that we should stop investing in electric vehicles or other technologies that could one day significantly benefit humanity.

However, that’s a very different thing to the agenda that the Climate Alarmists are pushing which are often myopically focused on counting carbon emissions. At least as of right now, unless one is willing to forego modern life and return to some sort of primitive existence, there is no way to avoid carbon emissions and it is actually unclear whether it is more advantageous to do so or not.

More on that later.

Of Course Climate Changes

Before we continue, we should take a brief moment to note that this phrase, “Climate change,” is a meaningless tautology. 

Of course climates change! It has for thousands of years!

For those old enough to remember, it used to be called Global Warming, and at other times the threat was of a Global Ice Age. Now as the false prophecies of yesteryear have not come to pass, Climate Change becomes the hot or cold catch all.

We must not miss the radical nature of this ideology. Much of it is rooted in elevating “nature” above humanity. It sees untouched, uncultivated nature as the ideal state—in contrast to the Biblical vision. It sees mankind not as the vice-gerants of God given dominion over creation to steward and cultivate, but rather as an invasive parasite. 

It is at its core anti-human.

Here are a few quotes to illustrate:

“Curing a body of cancer requires a radical and invasive therapy, and therefore, curing the biosphere of the human virus will also require a radical and invasive approach.”

(Paul Watson)

“The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child.”

(John Guillebaud)

Of course, these activists seldom calculate the long term economic and social effects of their horrid Malthusian policies.

With the current deficiency of birth rate replacement resulting from these ideologies, who’s going to pay the cost of socialized medicine and to take care of the ill and elderly? Without enough young people to form the productive working segment of society, all of the modern socialized welfare services will fail. Countries like China that previously enforced a one child policy are starting to feel this as their population ages and requires more assistance, yet there is a shortage of young people to do so. Similar trends are happening in the West. This is one of the reasons why euthanasia for the elderly is increasingly promoted.

Yet, even with all the bad fruit of this ideology, being called a “denier” ties you to the holocaust and make you a danger to society. It’s truly an upside down world.

The Fundamental Issue

It is ironic that many of those promoting the climate agenda call themselves progressives as they actually seek to halt real progress. 

However, to someone who does not believe in the Creator God and how He has made the world in Psalm 148, there is the problem of change. They cannot rest in God’s providence. Change is a threat to stability and security. And without a loving, sovereign God directing such change—change is a scary uncertainty.

However, as Christians, we can rest in the LORD because He is sovereignly directing history.

In the Christian view, God’s providence directs all things which come to pass and has ordained progress and development in history according to the principle of the growth of the Kingdom of God. Within God’s command to mankind to take dominion and subdue creation entails progress in cultural development. The fact that mankind takes raw materials from nature and fashions everything from iPhones to irrigation systems is part of him fulfilling the dominion mandate. When this is oriented to the LORD, it glorifies Him. 

Habakkuk 2:14 says that the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. This happens increasingly as more and more redeemed image bearers fulfill their calling to take godly dominion of the created order in productive and God-glorifying ways. The garden was not meant to stay an untouched garden. Rather, we see from Scripture that the glorified state is a garden-city where the products of man’s productive dominion are in harmony with the created order.

In the Christian worldview, there is an impetus both toward conservation and development.

You can think of it like a growing oak tree. It is constantly the same oak tree, but also always changing, maturing and developing. This is how the Kingdom of God grows—and interestingly, Jesus used the metaphor of a (mustard) tree growing to fill the garden as a way to illustrate it.

God’s law in creation is the foundation of constancy in creation (His law stands forever). He has set certain creational norms (laws) in place that give stability to the created order. This is also why we can study them and formulate equations to describe them (e.g. laws of motion in physics). Thus, because of His consistent ordering of creation, we can expect regularity and not just mindless chaos. It is also why we we can expect continuity amidst the change.²Consider this: If all we are is atoms in motion, every few years because of changes, we replace and change all the atoms in the body. So, are you still you? In a materialist worldview, no.

There is no principle of constancy in unbelieving worldviews because there is no God distinct from creation with unchanging purposes and laws to order creation. Only change and uncertain possibility are realities in an evolving universe. Yet the human impulse for some source of constancy and stability still lingers, and if it is not found in God, it is found in man’s idols.

This is the fundamental issue we’re facing when it comes to extreme climate alarmism: they have rejected the God of the Bible, and exchanged the worship of the Creator for the created. As a result, their world is constantly under threat and any change is seen as a danger that can become a runaway rogue toward an uncertain apocalypse.

The Growth of the Nanny State

So why the energy expenditure on pushing such a clearly false narrative?

For the secular climate change pundits, perceived threats are an impetus for “scientific” planning within society. It’s the deadly dream of modern man to have a planned order based in centralized control. (e.g. Climate lockdowns)

There are certain worldview presuppositions that are necessary for someone to arrive there—such as unbelief in the designed nature of creation by a benevolent and wise Creator. We are downstream from the rotten fruits of Darwinistic thinking that sees the cosmos not as an ordered creation, but the results of a chaotic and unguided process.

Sadly, many Christians themselves don’t realize how much their own thinking is shaped by the world.

After WW2 there was a huge growth of government planning and welfare. In the wake of global instability due to the war, people were open and looking for a source of security. But instead of turning to God, as they should have, the masses sought security from the government (from war, disease, loneliness, etc). Coinciding with the beginnings of the rise of secularism, the State as representative of collectivized man became the source of salvation from these existential threats.

Thus, we saw the growth of the secular welfare states on a level unpresidented in history.

The fact that we don’t even bat an eyelid at our state expenditure and take for granted its management of a host of things in modern society such as education and healthcare is a testiment to how short our historical attention span is and how easily people think the way things are are the way things always were. Many today look to the Nanny State for salvation and provision of much of their needs as our bloated welfare state well illustrates. 

Now, with the supposed threat of catastrophic climate change, again the default is to look to the State and its experts (read modern-day false prophets) for salvation.

Meaning and the Individual or Collective

Now, we must also at this point note that one of the fundamental worldview differences is how meaning in life and law are determined. For the secular atheistic worldview, sovereignty, law and meaning are denied to God and attributed to the human mind and will—either in the individual or the collective. For the secularist, the choices are radical individualism or collectivism—total autonomy or authoritarianism.

In contrast, the Christian view of reality is preinterpreted meaning (by God).

It is like a connect the dots puzzle. The meaning of the puzzle has already been predetermined by the designer of the puzzle. The person doing the puzzle is simply trying to uncover that predetermined meaning by connecting the dots to reveal the image. Like an instruction manual, God has revealed to us the things necessary for us to understand what He wants us to know about the puzzle through His Word.

However, the secular unbeliever has to conjure up an individualistic subjective meaning upon a completely chaotic world. There is no designer and the dots are random and may or may not produce anything coherent when you try to connect them. Instead, the individual must make up a meaning—sort of like some forms of abstract art or a rorschach blot.

The other way is a collectivist meaning, where societal consensus or collectivized man determines meaning and law, usually through the State. Ultimately, this is a secular attempt to create an alternative to the sovereignty of God, but its result is totalitarianism.

Marxist Visions: A return to paradise?

The modern day climate cult has its roots in Marxist and Socialist ideas and a quasi-utopian drive. That is, that people can immediately change the world by revolution and the alteration of the human environment; scientifically ‘planning’ the creation of a final, unchanging and ‘safe’ social order.

There is an urge to transfer responsibility from ourselves to the collective (embodied in the State). Thus, freedom and personal responsibility becomes an unbearable responsibility. People are terrified if they’re not among the multitudes, the masses. It’s a form of groupthink. 

In this crowd, humans are finding their identity. The fearful collective must change the world by revolution and alteration of the human environment (e.g. changing language, oil & gas, sex, etc). The goal is the creation of a final unchanging, ultimate order to make people feel safe. Thus people become the new ‘god’—planning and implementing their own destiny and salvation.

To create an unchangeable order, everything must be zero (hence net zero)—because zero is unchanging.

“The main characteristic of this revolution is the emphasis on organization – rule by organization i.e., it is an organocracy. The origin of this exaggeration of the organizational aspect of society is to be found within the ideal of science implying that by means of science we can attain a comprehensive knowledge and adequate control of reality. Such an ideal ultimately culminates in the central control of human society.”

H. Van Riessen

This has always lead to oppression and destruction in every society it has been tried. Man’s government kills freedom. Only Christ’s government brings true freedom.

For the Christian, we know that we are neither tasked to determine the future or be the source of our own security, nor are we able to even if we tried. Jesus in Matthew 10:29-30 reassures us that even hairs falling to the ground are within God’s sovereignty. Thus, we rest in the sovereignty of God in a way that the climate pagans cannot.

Climate and Environment Laws in Canada

Let’s take some examples from the Canadian context.

For those who are unaware of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act in Canada, this piece of legislation will have very significant repercussions for Canadians. For those outside of Canada, take note—Canada has led the way on these progressive and liberal policies. So, what happens in Canada is often a cue for what’s coming down the line in other developed nations.

The Canadian Executive branch has already taken liberty to re-write laws pertaining to itself and its limitations on this matter. A supreme court judge ruled this way when it was challenged by a few provinces:

“Climate change is real. It is caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities, and it poses a grave threat to humanity’s future. The only way to address the threat of climate change is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, 2021 SCC 11, para. 2

It goes on to conclude that,

“In summary, the evidence clearly shows that establishing minimum national standards of [Green House Gas] GHG price stringency to reduce GHG emissions is of concern to Canada as a whole. This matter is critical to our response to an existential threat to human life in Canada and around the world. As a result, it readily passes the threshold test and warrants consideration as a possible matter of national concern.”

Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, 2021 SCC 11, para. 171

Canada’s Chief Justice stated that the carbon tax is not a tax—it’s a levy. 

This is because the executive branch can’t create new taxes independently, but it can make levies. So, this is a way to sneak in the tax through a back door.

Take a look at this video on Carbon Tax by the Fraser Institute.

Granting Legal Personhood to Nature

Bad ideas have bad consequences.

It’s even worse when they’re written into law. But that’s exactly what’s happening.

Christopher Stone wrote a book, “Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the Environment” which argues for the civil rights of vegetation.

Yep. You read that correctly.

He argues that trees deserve a representative who can act on its behalf in courts, consultations, etc., that they should have rights and damages to themselves recognized legally, and that compensation should be made for its benefit. This is the type of stuff being written in academic law literature—and you shouldn’t think that it will just stay there. As J. Gresham Machen once famously warned,

“What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires. In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combatted; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate.”

J. Gresham Machen

These days, Ecological Justice is being taught and thought about in universities. It argues for ethical considerations toward other non-human species, treating nature as a “person” or subject, recognizing dignity to all living creatures and ecosystems, as well as the rights of nature. It shifts focus from humans to nature as a whole.

Ecological Justice goes so far as advocating for “rights” for rivers…

Here is the Universal Declaration of River Rights which states that, “All rivers are entitled to the fundamental rights set forth in this Declaration which arise from their very existence on our shared planet.” It goes on to enumerate 7 fundamental rights of rivers:

1. The right to flow
2. The right to perform essential functions within its ecosystem
3. The right to be free from pollution
4. The right to feed and be fed by sustainable aquifers
5. The right to native biodiversity
6. The right to regeneration and restoration
7. The right to maintain lateral and longitudal connectivity.

In order to ensure full implementation, each river will be entitled to a guardian to monitor and enforce its rights and governments shall ensure adequate funding to realize these rights.

Now, lest you think that this is some sort of prank or pipe dream of an environmentalist academic in an ivy league library somewhere, Quebec has granted legal rights to a river already! The CBC reports that, “Magpie River’s personhood status is a bid to protect it from future threats, such as hydro development.

Sustainability: The Cloak for Totalitarianism

Let’s be clear here, when the climate cultist talks about sustainability, this is not about responsible use of the creation… Prior to all this crazy, Christians understood the concept of stewardship of creation. As Van Riessen notes,

“They thought of their inventions as a contribution to His glory; their mastery was a stewardship. The loss of this religious attitude has ushered in the disintegration of life. Its recovery is the only chance for the future of Western civilization.”

H. Van Riessen

The modern environmental movement claims to respect global diversity, and “scientific” prediction. Yet this totalitarian science which seeks to control rather than trace out, tells us to leave control to them. Leave it to the experts they say.

“Science may begin by respecting the diversity and the freedom of men in the statistical form of its laws, based on probability. But it ends by an application which eradicates such diversity and banishes man’s freedom of determining his own way of life.”

H. Van Riessen

There is a reason why the climate cult and the woke agenda go together—because they belong together. But don’t take my word alone. Others have also noted this,

“[Sustainability is] a condition that arises when capitalism and hierarchy are abolished; individuals are made to see themselves as ‘citizens of the world;’ and a new order materializes on the basis of eco-friendliness, social justice, and new forms of economic distribution.”

Peter Wood

The goal in all of this is a static scientific world socialism. (e.g. Al Gore – Global Marshall plan, planned society, net zero) This is one of the reasons why we are so regulated in our societies now. These policy makers desire the leveling of differences to achieve net zero. 

This is not a good direction for the Western world. When this path has been walked before, it never led to anything good. Van Riessen gives a well-needed warning,

“The totalitarian state must be opposed at its first manifestations, at the first abuse of science and technique, at the first appearance of a community ideology which would pervert the relationship between authority and freedom and relativize the independence of the different spheres of society… The way of planning does not end in stability but in… a reign of terror and the threat of terror; instead of security they will reap unrest, confusion and agony. Such a planned society will not become a fellowship but a monstrosity without any resemblance to what God purposed in his majestic scheme of creation. And we base our prediction on the Christian faith, that God is a jealous God who avenges himself on idolatry and permits man to destroy himself by his own sins.”

H. Van Riessen

The Spirituality of the Climate Change Cult

Lest Christians think that this is something in a “neutral” sphere, there is a certain “spirituality” or worldview behind the climate agenda. The alarmism of the extreme Climate Change doomsayers comes from an unbelieving worldview that does not have a Sovereign God to trust in.

Whereas God has promised:

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Genesis 8:22

Today’s Climate Change alarmists want to depopulate the earth because they see humanity as a sort of parasite upon an otherwise pristine planet’s ecosystem. In their worldview, untouched nature is the ultimate state of innocence or perfection. They don’t believe that Man has been created as God’s steward over creation to subdue it and make it fruitful. In their worldview, man is the problem, not the solution.

However, the Bible tells us that God has given to mankind the responsibilty to have dominion over the creation and to bring it to its peak fruitfulness and care. By rightly understanding how to subdue the untamed nature and utilize its raw materials, mankind is able to bring order to the creation and help fascilitate flourishing for people and the rest of creation. Thus, the solution is not to eradicate God’s steward, but rather to educate/disciple him.

Biosphere as Idol

Whereas God gave to man dominion over the earth and creation, in the secular climate cult, the earth has dominion over man and human thought becomes anti-culture. In denying God’s cultural mandate, God’s order is turned upside down. Instead of man having dominion over creation, the creation is made to have dominion over man.

Thus for the climate cultist, this is why civilization becomes the problem. They start to borrow from the noble savage myth of Rousseau’s thinking.

The biosphere (as they imagine it) is the ultimate priority (idol), civilization is seen as an intrusion and destructive aspect disturbing the ideal state of nature. This is one side of the extremes which happen in the climate cult and can lead to those types of tree-hugging hippie vegans who are against further human development of natural resources tying themselves to trees, pipelines and the like. However, the other side of the ditch—ravaging natural resources to maximize short-term profits with no care for creation—can be just as dangerous.

The Climate Agenda is a Religious Agenda

Now we should make it clear that the current climate agenda is an anti-Christian cult masquerading as science. Here are 5 things illustrating the religious nature of the Climate Agenda:

1. It is Materialistic – the belief that nothing exists besides matter. Science is the discipline of exploring the material world – so it becomes the final authority on reality. Science alone has the capacity to fix it. In the materialist world, this is your heaven because this is all there is or ever will be. Man is considered a problem to the created world. Therefore, the Climate Agenda is the materialist’s religion.

In the UN 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, they stated that the future of our planet and humanity lies in our hands… we have mapped the road to sustainable development.

COP27 – “creation is not our possession, the human person must recognize this and find his/her place in this fact… for others, creation itself is sacred…”
The climate agenda has its own set of dearly held beliefs which are at odds with a Biblical worldview.

2. It forbids what God commands – It says that we are merely inhabitants, not stewards. It rejects the command to be fruitful and multiply. It puts more value on animals over humans. In this upside-down system, you can get fined for abusing animals but approved for killing your child in the womb.

3. It’s pantheistic – contains elements of Gaia worship. Romans 1:25 says that those who reject God end up in the worship of creature rather than Creator. This ideology believes that the cosmos and divinity are one and the same. Thus, language like “sacred earth”, “having communion with the natural world”, “sister wind, brother moon”, “creation itself is judging us”. If you listen closely to the language used by the prophets of the climate agenda, you’ll quickly realize how religious it actually is. Note the personification of creation. This is also being championed by apostate liberal churches. (e.g. climaterepentance.com – 10 commandments of climate change)

4. Utopian eschatology at variance with Scripture – In this anti-Christian climate cult, Man’s potential to work, raise a family, and worship God is cast aside (e.g. stay home, stay safe, get a vasectomy, do ZOOM church, etc). Their vision is of a world with more birds and fewer people. It seeks to elevate feminism and propagate effeminacy in men. If you’re wondering at this point how that’s even connected, it’s because the climate agenda and cultural marxism share the same worldview. This is why the radical blue haired leftists seem to be involved in all of these causes together (climate change, LBGTQ+, feminism, critical race theory, etc).

5. It positions man as his own saviour – Ultimately, this ideology is an anti-Christian cult because believes that Man is at the centre of this vision (even though people are the problem). So, Man must fix the world and then leave? Man is self-crucified but never to be resurrected. He must become his own messiah and die his own vicarious death. Man is both sinner and his own saviour.

Many Christians have been duped by the Climate Agenda Cult. It’s time to recover instead a Biblical call to stewardship of the earth as we fulfill God’s command to take dominion and subdue the creation to make it flourish.

Man as Plague

As has been mentioned already, another feature of the Climate Cult is the belief that humans are a pathogen on the earth. Here are a few quotes to illustrate:

“Humans on the earth behave in some ways like a pathogenic micro-organism, or like the cells of a tumor.”

Sir James Lovelock

“We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon Earth. Until such a time as homo sapiens should desire to rejoin nature some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

David Graber

Thus, for the globalists and climate alarmists, families and productivity are a real problem.

If you don’t fear God, you will fear anything

This ideology produces a lot of fear in the hearts of its devotees. The elites using this to gain control know that fear is a powerful motivator and do not shrink back to use it. Even health officials suddenly become climate experts in service of the narrative nowadays it seems.

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer said:

“Climate change is already affecting the health of people living in Canada. If left unchecked, the health impacts of climate change will become much more serious and wide-ranging. There is hope, if we act together and act now. Climate change is the largest health threat facing people in Canada and around the world. Public health systems have an important role in preventing and reducing these health impacts and now is the time for collective action.”

Dr. Theresa Tam

Tam goes on,

“Public health has made tremendous gains over the past century in improving the health and lives of people in Canada and around the world. Working with other sectors, we must build on these strengths to better prepare for and respond to what the World Health Organization calls the greatest health threat of our time.”

Dr. Theresa Tam

Note the language “the greatest health threat of our time.” Really? Greater than heart disease and cancer? There is nothing as cruel as people who will oppress you in the name of the greater good. Climate alarmism becomes a convenient threat to justify almost anything.

“The impacts are not just physical, however. Negative mental health impacts, such as worry, grief, anxiety, anger, hopelessness, and fear are linked to climate change.”

Dr. Theresa Tam

On this point, Tam is correct. If you don’t fear God, you’ll fear anything.

This is why so many people and even Christians fall for this. God said in Leviticus 26:8 that your enemies will fear you if you fear me. But when we fail to fear the LORD, we end up fearing a whole host of enemies.

What Dr. Tam is advancing is a sort of Creed, another religion masked in the language of science.

Chesterton once wrote,

“The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statues, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen—that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the government will really help it to persecute its heretics…I am not frightened of the word ‘persecution’…It is a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof—then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are.”

G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

Sounds like he could have written that today.

The True Exodus

Ultimately, the cult of Climate Change is seeking to write another salvation story.

We see from the covenant God made with His Old Testament people that obedience to the Law means life and blessing in the land and upon the land and that disobedience means curses, disease, dispossession, famine and death. 

Has God changed? Does He not still relate to us covenantally? 

Jesus Christ institutes the New Covenant in His blood, which is better than the Old. Yet the Old Covenant still tells us things about the unchanging nature of God and how He relates with His people.

In the story of the Exodus, the plagues were God turning creation against Egypt who thought of creation as ‘gods’. Each of the plagues corresponds with one of the Egyptian pagan gods. They relied on the constancy of creation and God turns it against them in judgment. They turned away from the Creator to worship the created, so He shows them that He alone is the God over the creation order. Modern man, in turning away from the True God to worship the created in more technological and sophisticated ways is simply repeating the mistakes of the Egyptians and will reap the same.

In the New Testament era, the Christian is now the temple—carrying God’s law to the nations—His liberating, reconciling influence. Thus, we are called to bring God’s law to bear on how the nations think about the environment and climate. We are to declare the true Exodus, the true liberation from bondage to decay that God has set in place through His Son.

The Counterfeit Exodus

The Climate Cult also has its own version of an “exodus” and salvation story.

Secular climate cultists declare a “green liberation”—fully equipped with their own “ark” into which they put their “Earth Charter” which is a document of 16 principles under four pillars around things such as ecological integrity, social and economic justice and democracy. I’m not joking, this is a real thing you can go look up. It also has its own promises of blessings and curses for obedience or disobedience. Even Pope Francis has declared COVID as nature’s judgment for climate change and chimed in several times favorably to the climate alarmist agenda.

In 2010, during the UN’s Climate Change Conference (COP16), the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, prayed to a Mayan goddess Ixchel.³The Washington Post has since removed the article with the original citation. You can read some of it here. Ixchel, the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving, was invoked to oversee and inspire the proceedings. Even though the modern day climate cult shrouds its message in the language of science, progress and sustainability, really it is simply a regression to pagan nature worship and animism.

As Dr. Calvin Beisner notes,

“Respect for nature means the resacralization of nature; ‘economic justice’ means redistribution of wealth to achieve economic equality;… and ‘culture of peace’ means rescinding a nation’s right of self-defense in favor of protection from a global government with power to enforce.”

Dr. Calvin Beisner)

These are the core tennets of the climate cult.

As should be clear by now, Christians must resist this cult and expose its lies. 

We are the salt and light of the world—God’s agents to preserve the world from decay and bring the illumination of His wisdom from His Word. However, this is a topic that is seldom addressed by pastors and Christian leaders today. While this is not the center of our faith, it is one of the issues that a robust Christian worldview must be able to grapple with.

Especially with the rise of the radical Climate Cult in affecting policy and law in our countries today, Christians should not take an apathetic view to this topic. There are many resources to help Christians know the truth and have an informed, biblical opinion on these matters. I’ve listed a few below, make use of them and consider how your faith informs how you should think and act about this issue.

Further Resources

Here are a few resources I’ve found helpful.

• Cornwall Alliance – environmentalism resources – https://cornwallalliance.org/
• co2science.org
• False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg
• Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism by E. Calvin Beisner
• Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas–Not Less by Alex Epstein
• Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger
• Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters by Steven E. Koonin

Footnotes

• 1
  As an upfront note before I jump in, I owe a lot of the content of this article/episode to the work of Dr. Joe Boot, Dr. Aaron Rock and Andre Schuten. The thoughts and insights of these men on this topic has been hugely influential and helpful to me. Much of what is presented here is simply a distillation of their work and the work of many others far wiser and more intelligent than me.
• 2
  Consider this: If all we are is atoms in motion, every few years because of changes, we replace and change all the atoms in the body. So, are you still you? In a materialist worldview, no.
• 3
  The Washington Post has since removed the article with the original citation. You can read some of it here.