THIS POST IS A PRESENTATION OF A FORBES ARTICLE ON ENVIRONMENTALISM WRITTEN BY ROBERT H NELSON MORE THAN 9 YEARS AGO WITH THE TITLE :

Environmentalism: The New Religion Freely Taught In Schools

LINK TO SOURCE: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/03/27/environmentalism-the-new-religion-freely-taught-in-schools/?sh=7de612da6659

PART-1: WHAT THE FORBES ARTICLE SAYS

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has brought religion back into the thick of American politics. But his message in the process got garbled. Campaigning several weeks ago in Ohio, prior to “Super Tuesday,” the former Pennsylvania senator offered the opinion that President Obama’s political agenda is grounded in a theology that is false, “phony” and misleading. Pressed to explain, Santorum the next day narrowed his focus to President Obama’s environmental religion, claiming the President promoted the notion that “man is here to serve the earth as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the earth.” Santorum further explained that “the earth is not the objective. Man is the objective, and I think a lot of radical environmentalists” – such as the president, he seemed to suggest – “have it upside-down,” thinking that “the earthis above man.” In his critique of the president’s beliefs, Santorum was both half right and half wrong. He was correct to say that environmentalism now has the status of religion. He was less accurate, however, in his specific characterization of the environmental faith. While many political commentators were quick to criticize Santorum, few understood the biblical allusions in the former Pennsylvania senator’s remarks. In Genesis 1, for example, God says: “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” As Santorum implied, President Obama misguidedly seems to place fish, birds and other creatures above human beings, ignoring God’s wishes. Not much later, in Genesis 6, however, the Bible tells us that “the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth.” To punish his wayward followers, God caused a great flood to cover the earth, destroying all living things. But He made an exception. God commanded Noah to build a large, seaworthy ark, “… enter the ark. … [and] bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.” Had President Obama chosen to respond to Santorum’s attack in biblical terms, he might have noted that the Endangered Species Act is a modern version of Noah’s Ark. Creation belongs to God, its preservation belongs to human beings. In environmentalism, the largest religious debts are owed to Protestant Calvinism, perhaps one reason the devoutly Catholic Santorum finds environmental religion so difficult to fathom. The rituals of environmentalism celebrate reduced consumption – lower the heat, drive fewer miles, use less water, live in smaller houses, have fewer children, etc., etc. Limiting human appetites, rather than satisfying ever growing demands (as economics seeks to do), is the environmental command. In his eighteenth century Massachusetts sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” America’s greatest Calvinist, Jonathan Edwards, preached to his congregation that “your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell.” As prominent an environmentalist as David Brower, who served as executive director of the Sierra Club for 18 years, described the state of human existence here on earth as a terrible “cancer” that was destroying God’s good Creation. Being environmentally “born again” was for Brower – and many other environmentalists – the only good answer to modern man’s environmental corruption and sinfulness. The late Michael Crichton, known for his criticism of “environmental theology,” declared that environmentalism is the “religion of choice for urban atheists.” The eminent historian William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin, current president of the American Historical Association, notes that environmentalism “grapples with ultimate questions at every scale of human existence.” “More than most other human endeavors, this is precisely what religions aspire to do,” A leading historian of environmentalism, Mark Stoll, explains that environmentalism’s most prominent figures historically – such as John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson – came overwhelmingly from Protestant, and especially Calvinist, family origins. So does Brower. The residual Protestantism of environmentalism – while now taking a mostly secular form – has deep roots in America’s Puritan heritage. Rejecting the Christianity of their childhood, Muir, Leopold, Carson and Brower turned as adults to a secularized form of Calvinism in which reverence for “the Earth” became a disguised substitute for worship of “God.” The Christian right and the environmental left have more in common than they realize. If Santorum had focused more directly on the rise of environmentalism to the status of religion, and not tried to explain the precise theology of environmentalism, he might have had a political winner. He might have asked: Why is it possible to teach one religion – environmental religion – in public elementary schools, while it is impossible to teach another religion – Christianity – in those same schools? Robert H. Nelson is a professor of environmental policy in the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland and a senior fellow of The Independent Institute, Oakland, CA. He is the author of “The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary America” (Penn State Press, 2010) and, most recently, of “Rethinking Church and State: The Case of Environmental Religion” (Pace Environmental Law Review, Fall 2011).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

THE ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY OF ENVIRONMENTALISM BY ENVIRONMENTALIST DAVID BROWER, THAT “HUMAN EXISTENCE HERE ON EARTH IS A TERRIBLE CANCER THAT IS DESTROYING GOD’S GOOD CREATION” IS THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONMENTALISM AND THEIR GODLY CLAIM TO GOODNESS AND AUTHORITY OVER NATURE DESCRIBED AS “THE ENVIRONMENT”. YET WHAT GOD SAID IN GENESIS IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE. HE SAYS THAT GOD HAD MADE MAN IN HIS IMAGE AND HAD APPOINTED MAN AS THE THE LORDS OF NATURE BY VESTING HUMANS WITH DOMINION OVER ALL THE OTHER CREATURES DESCRIBED AS THE “FISH OF THE SEA AND THE FOWL OF THE AIR AND OVER THE CATTLE AND OVER ALL THE EARTH AND OVER EVERY CREEPING THING THAT CREEPETH UPON THE EARTH. HERE WE PROPOSE THAT IT IS THIS DOMINION GIFT OF GOD AS THE LORDS OF THE EARTH AND OF THE REST OF NATURE THAT IS ACTUALLY AT THE ROOT OF THE ENVIRONMENTALISM RELIGION. THE OTHER KEY ISSUE HERE IS CALVINISM WHERE REVERENCE FOR “THE ENVIRONMENT” BECAME A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE WORSHIP OF GOD.

RELATED POST: THE BAMBIE PRINCIPLE: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/11/15/the-bambi-principle/ EXCERPT:

The Disney movie Bambi gave rise to what is known as the Bambi Principle in environmentalism. It extended the concept of environmentalism, as in do no harm, to a role of humans as caretaker of nature. The Bambi story goes as follows: {A man who had gone deer hunting and a number of does strolled from the woods into the meadow. Joe tried to pick out the fattest doe to shoot but his wife was overcome with the Bambi image she remembered from the movie and it brought her to tears. The hunt was abandoned. These contradictory responses derive from the lingering power of of the Bambi principle – a 1942 Disney cartoon about that big-eyed fawn, so cute that even 74 years later, Bambi still animates debates over animal rights and environmentalism such that saving Bambi has now been extended to saving the planet. Bambi didn’t start as an American environmental fable. It recounts the story of a fawn who grows up to be the prince of the forest alongside his royal father. But his rise to power comes only after the death of his mother and near loss of his mate Faline. While hunters and predatory animals are a problem for these deer, in the forest, owls eat mice, crows eat a friendly rabbit, and a fox eats a duck but these images are antithetical to the Bambi Principle of environmentalism. Early reviewers had thought that Bambi was anti-fascist fable and recent writers thought that the story was an allegory about the plight of the Jews in Europe. By 1942, when Disney released the film, Americans were processing their shock at the attack on Pearl Harbor and our entrance into a world war, which is reflected in the film’s simplified portrayal of deer living in an idealized forest where predators and prey play together and fear only a shadowy character called “Man,” who is equipped with guns and fire}

POSTSCRIPT:

WITH REGARDS TO THE PHRASE “A RELIGION FREELY TAUGHT IN SCHOOL” WE NOTE IN YET ANOTHER RELATED POST THAT IT IS NOT JUST FREELY TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS BUT PREACHED BY MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS WHOSE TEACHING STYLE IS BOTH RELIGION AND AN EXTREME FORM OF ACTIVISM. IN A RELATED POST WE SHOW HOW THIS CORRUPTION OF EDUCATION CREAES CHILD ACTIVISTS LIKE THAT LITTLE SWEDISH CLIMATE CHANGE GIRL GRETA THUNBERG AND WE FURTHER PROPOSE THAT THE USE OF CHILDREN IN THIS WAY TO PUSH ONE’S ACTIVISM AGENDA IS A FORM OF CHILD ABUSE. LINK TO POST ON ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISM OF TEACHERS: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/04/28/the-new-climate-science/

EXCERPT:

Sweden’s environmental education is building a generation of Greta Thunbergs. It is creating green revolutionaries, that think in a specific way. That 17-year-old Greta Thunberg became the face of climate change action may have taken the world by surprise, but in Sweden, young people have long been champions of the environment. While Thunberg made her way to the United Nations climate talks in Madrid earlier this month, students at an elementary school in a suburb of Stockholm removed their sneakers and boots at the door before entering for the day, both for their comfort and to reduce the need for chemical floor cleaners that harm the environment. Caring for the environment is integrated into every aspect of the day for students at the Orminge Skola Elementary School, where bright classrooms are decorated with world maps and images of animals. Students scrape their leftover lunch off reusable dishes into a compost container, remove their shoes at the door before entering and learn about the impact of plastic pollution on oceans. Liv Emfel, 11, says she can’t imagine that people don’t recycle their waste, having grown up learning to recycle at home and in school.Linda Givetash / NBC News “I have two different visions of the world. It’s either a beautiful world and we fixed everything and we saved the climate and the environment, or it’s just getting worse and we can’t do anything and everyone thinks they’re going to die because we didn’t do anything earlier,” said Liv Emfel, 11, who did not seem intimidated talking to journalists in English, which is not her native language. “I hope it’s going to be a beautiful world, but you can’t know, (so) you have to do something now (for it) to get better.” The environment — from ecology to conservation — has been an integral part of the Swedish curriculum since 1969. Teachers and education experts couldn’t pinpoint an event that sparked its adoption, but the relationship with nature has long been prominent in Swedish culture. “My family have recycled all of my life and (when) I heard that some people don’t, I thought it was weird,” Emfel said, before joining her class of fewer than 25 students. The country’s environmentally conscious culture is attributed by many to the fact that more than 80 percent of Swedes live within 3 miles of one of its 30 national parks, 4,000 nature reserves or many other conservation sites. Use of public lands for hiking, camping and other recreation is not only encouraged but is also a legislated right. Instead of being exceptional, Thunberg, who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2019, reflects the culmination of decades of government educational policies, said Kajsa Holm, 26, a social science teacher at the Vårbyskolan Middle School in southwest Stockholm for children ages 10 to 16. “She is a representative of this generation. A lot of kids have the feeling that they need to change, that something needs to change. Lessons on the environment aren’t compressed into a single course but addressed across subjects, from science to home economics, and in every grade beginning in preschool. Given the breadth of the instruction, the interest and activism in environmentalism isn’t a surprise to teachers.