How Climate Change Became a Religion for Young Atheists

Knowledge of Bible stories is no longer as widespread as was once the case, but even so, most people in Europe and America know about Noah and the Great Flood. Mankind had grown so wicked that God decided to punish them with rising sea levels. This resulted in an environmental catastrophe, and it was all brought about by the actions of those foolish and shortsighted men and women who would not reform their ways. Their entire civilisation was swept away by the sea and they were all drowned. 

There is something eerily familiar about this scenario. The idea of humanity’s bad behaviour bringing about its near extinction appears in almost every daily newspaper and television news bulletin. There are clear and obvious parallels between the story of a flood which inundates the whole world and current fears about climate change and sea level rise. This goes some way towards explaining the enormous enthusiasm with which many young people in the West have embraced the idea of a worldwide disaster, one brought about by human selfishness and greed. It is a simple and easily understood narrative and one which has been popular for thousands of years.

Events very similar to the Biblical flood are described in the writings of various other ancient cultures. It is a powerful mythic archetype; one which exerts a strange and enduring fascination. Little wonder then that young people today should find themselves so drawn to the latest iteration of this scenario. The comparisons between the present frenzy about climate change and Biblical stories of humanity’s wickedness being punished also contain another element which we see today, and that is that repentance, and changing our way of life can avert the punishment with which we are threatened.

In the Bible, those who faced the wrath of God were often able to avoid the consequences of their sinful ways if they repented and gave up the luxurious lifestyles which they enjoyed. Provided that they gave up their fine clothes, wore sackcloth and fasted, then the Lord might spare them. We see this same concept also in the modern cult of Climate Change. To prevent our cities from being swept away by violent tornadoes, drowned by the sea or consumed by wildfires, we must give up our own luxuries. Only by promising to scrap our gas boilers and petrol-guzzling cars, and by giving up flying abroad for our holidays will we be able to evade the wind, floods, or fires of Heaven which will otherwise destroy us. Then too, we must eat less extravagantly and perhaps buy only second-hand clothes. These steps are the modern-day equivalent of covering ourselves with sackcloth and ashes.

The anger with which so-called climate-change deniers are greeted also tells us that this whole business is more in the nature of a religious faith than a scientific hypothesis. Those asking questions are regarded in much the same light as heretics who doubted the existence of God prior to the Flood were viewed. Rather than debating calmly with such people, the champions of climate-change orthodoxy instead impugn their motives and accuse them of being in the pay of oil companies or belonging to the far-right. Discussions centre around the sinister motives of such individuals and the facts and figures which they produce tend to be overlooked or wholly ignored. In short, they are dismissed as wicked; their opinions anathematised as dangerous and likely to cause harm to the human race.

That the current obsession with climate change is a psychological and spiritual phenomenon, rather than a scientific one, may be seen in other ways besides the very clear and obvious comparison to religious orthodoxy. Over the last fifty or sixty years, people living in the Western world have been menaced with a succession of half a dozen scenarios, each designed to terrify them with the fear of imminent death, accompanied by the possible extinction of humanity. These ideas have been reflected in the popular culture of the time, appearing in novels, cinema films, and television dramas. In the 1960s, the world faced the certainty of horrific overpopulation, accompanied by widespread famine. Then came the idea of a coming Ice Age which, it was said, was all but inevitable. Those who questioned this were said to be rejecting science. These predicted disasters were followed by the promise that natural resources would soon be exhausted, leading to the collapse of industrial civilisations. Following this anxiety came the prospect of nuclear war, accompanied by a nuclear winter; a kind of man-made Ice Age. In the 1990s, it was claimed that an asteroid or comet was sure to strike the earth at some point, sending us to extinction as surely as the one millions of years earlier had sent the dinosaurs to their doom. Then, roughly at the turn of the millennium, global warming became the greatest fear—this was subsequently rebranded as climate change (and, most recently, ‘Global Boiling’.)

The truth is, there is something about the idea of existential threats to human civilisation which, for some reason, makes them attractive to us. We always like to have one hanging over our heads, as one might say. Climate change fits in perfectly with this trend, which is very old indeed. When looking at the two sides to this equation, it is not surprising that climate change should be enjoying such popularity at the moment. The only slightly odd thing about the business is why young people should be so keen to follow and embrace the orthodoxy to which their elders are devoted.

Historically, the younger generation has tended to reject the ideas which are held by governments and widely accepted by everyone else. Yet, these days it is the young who are the keenest advocates of the dangers of climate change and the most likely to support the more extreme measures to combat it. This religious fervour strongly suggests that for many young people, climate change is less to do with science than it is blind faith. The desire to abandon their luxuries and even forego having children makes this whole business look like a typical apocalyptic cult of the kind which has cropped up from time to time in human history. Followers of such crazes, such as the Children's Crusade in the Middle Ages, surrender their reason and give their hearts and souls to a cause which promises salvation for believers who are prepared to devote themselves without reservation. While climate change has endured longer than some of these mad obsessions, there is little evidence of it being replaced by a new fad in the near future. For the time being, we must simply accept that our children and grandchildren are likely to be in thrall to the Net Zero crusade, believing they are helping to avert a worldwide deluge, preceded by uncontrollable wildfires and searing heat from the sun.