Your Voice: Climate change religion has its holy books, priesthood and fanatical adherents

All letters to the editor published by KelownaNow reflect only the opinions of the readers who submit them, and not necessarily those of KelownaNow or its staff. Letters can be submitted to news@kelownanow.com

The idea of climate change has become such a religion that it can easily be compared to medieval Christianity.

The faithful worship the earth goddess Gaia. Most adherents do not read the holy books (UN/IPCC Reports) and yet have a fanatical belief in them. Rather, the holy books have to be interpreted for the faithful by the clergy (elite activists like Greta Thunberg, David Suzuki or Al Gore).

Adherents have a blind faith. Most are taught the doctrines through a priesthood of mediators (e.g. politicians, Grade 5 teachers, university activists, CBC). The faithful worship at global conferences where tens of thousands of disciples congregate annually to listen to the gospel and then take the message to the heathens back home.

The priesthood teaches an apocalyptic doomsday – fear of fire and flood keeps the adherents in line. The carbon tax and carbon offsets (say, on your airline tickets) are tithes for forgiveness which will cleanse one's soul for the sin of carbon usage.

There can be no debate, the canon is closed, the UN has decreed that the "science is settled."

Anyone who questions orthodoxy is a denier (i.e. a heretic) who must be punished for their sins by shaming them into silence and/or being cast into the wilderness by having their voices, their careers, and their livelihoods cancelled. It's easy to have "consensus" when anyone who "speaks truth to power" is cancelled and shunned.

Just like 400 years ago when Galileo was sentenced by the Pope to house arrest for the remainder of his life for stating that the earth revolved around the sun, contrary to scholars, and contrary to the very Pope himself, who had decided that the "science was settled."

Just like "witches" (almost always women) in Scotland 500 years ago who were violently killed because the Church decided they were "controlling the weather" and "causing unusual storms on the North Sea."

When the authorities believe that the actions of individuals (e.g. eating meat, driving cars, heating your home with natural gas) can affect the weather, then of course they have to "take action" in order to "keep us all safe," right?

Does any of this sound familiar?