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But I also have to agree with you that Reno and the ATF had no idea who they were dealing with and the tragedy and slaughter of the innocents at Waco was at its base, to borrow a line from Cool Hand Luke, a failure to communicate.

From the divine Mrs. MZ’s beautiful post yesterday on confession and forgiveness I think it’s also so important to understand the forum you’re operating within. While Koresh answered only to God, the Clinton administration had to answer to the American people. When people are operating from such divergent paradigms it makes more sense how so many innocent children could end up in the crossfire.

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First of all, to implicitly conflate caring about the environment with endorsing a nanny government seems to be taking things a bit to the extreme. While I’m not at all a fan of either nanny government or, really, rabid environmentalism (as religious environmentalists seem to now be against them since they might allow “business as usual” for all those big bad corporations) I really don’t understand how buying carbon offsets is an example of either.

Second, to imply that personal behavior *doesn’t* have significant ramifications for the community-at-large seems overly simplistic. Since the health of a community is directly correlated to the health of its individuals it makes sense that there’s a pretty solid connection between the two.

Third, the Week in Review is sort of like the US Weekly of the NYT and I actually have to admit that it’s one of my favorite sections after the Book Review section. Can we please agree to go a little easier on the Week in Review section next time?

Fourthly, to me carbon offsets seem to be a way to try to help maintain an environment that is a pretty important part of our lives. The drastic increase in global CO2 levels is pretty well documented. Whether this correlates to global warming is another matter entirely. Practically speaking how is going carbon neutral really all that different from trying to eat better or working out at the gym when we are talking about our overall health? While it’s true that eating healthier and going to the gym may be seen as a sort of repentance for simply being alive and aging – are they also a sort of “indulgence” since the food costs more and the gym commands dues?

Fifthly, to try to compare those that believe in an eschatological framework of the world, like PreMill Dispensationalists, with religious environmentalists is again I think a bit of a stretch. While it’s true that both may be trying to “save” the world, with one you get a Waco and the other you get Earth Day.

Finally, while I initially thought that this whole carbon offset thing was pretty laughable and more of the same from eschatological environmentalists, I now wonder if it’s really such a bad thing after all if it’s just trying to make the planet a bit healthier?

Oh, and one other thing. What’s the deal with all those missing bees?

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“As environmentalism becomes increasingly like an intrusive state religion, we dissenters become increasingly prickly about suggestions that we suffer from some kind of aberration.
The naïve environmentalism of my daughter’s preschool is a force-fed potpourri of myth, superstition, and ritual that has much in common with the least reputable varieties of religious Fundamentalism.”

Another economist, Robert Nelson, after recognizing that environmentalism is a secular religion, has tried to analyze economics as a competing secular religion. In his Economics as Religion: from Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond, he writes:

“Indeed, the conflicts between economic and environmental values that dominated many of the policy outcomes during my years at the Interior Department are best understood as new variations on earlier religious disagreements among followers in branches of Jewish and Christian religion.”

However, I rarely see any appreciation in the press of the importance of secular religion, and viewing policy issues in these terms is often enlightening.

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There is the saying attributed to Johann Tetzel, a papal commissioner for the sale of indulgences, which is translated as “As soon as the coin in the coffer springs, the soul from purgatory springs.

Though Rome could have responded a bit more quickly, I think they would say — and Akin would probably say — there was never any selling of indulgences. Instead, it was the combination of almsgiving with the sale of indulgences that led people to misinterpret what was going on. In other words — sometimes the indulgence-granter would require the penitent to do something to show proper penitence — say, give money for the building of St. Peter’s. It was such almsgiving that permitted the indulgence-granter to have cause to grant the indulgence. But there wasn’t a direct link in that the penitent could show repentance by other means.

I think that this doesn’t necessarily negate the comparison to carbon offsets in that a business or individual might also say that their own carbon offset activity is proof of their repentance and indication that they should receive a societal indulgence.

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http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/2007/04/a_reader_writes.html

Jimmy says indulgences have NEVER been for sale.

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Have you read Michael Crichton’s speech on this? Go here (http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speeches/index.html) and click on the speech entitled “Environmentalism as Religion.” It’s right on. (The other pieces there are really good as well.)

And although I know many will find reference to him noxious, Rush Limbaugh has been saying this for years…

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I’ve been contemplating the similarities between religious folks who talk about the imminent end of the world and environmentalists who occasionally speak in somewhat similar fashion about the certain doom for the planet.

Well, the, uh, APOCALYPTIC picture painted in the New Testament Book of Revelation in many ways looks like a planet upon which environmental disaster has become routine and global warning is run rampant.

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