Religion, politics and climate change rhetoric have one thing in common

They are all about power, not about the "greater good"

In the late 11th century, Christians from Europe engaged in military interventions in what is now the Middle East to curb the expansion of Islam and reclaim what they called the “Holy Lands”. This was a fight about power - both religions wanted greater control over Earth’s population and both claimed the high ground of “greater good”. It is hard to see why murder, torture, all-out-warfare did any “good”.

What is interesting about all forms of Christianity and of Islam is that these religions have as basic tenets rules that demand adherence to their respective faiths and punish anyone who holds a different belief. The first four of the Ten Commandments are about fidelity to the Christian concept of “god” and Islamic ideology encourages “death to infidels”. No sensible person can argue that the underlying objective of either religion (or any other religion) is power.

My friend Bill Barlow over coffee one day a year or two ago said something I thought was profound. He said “I don’t believe anything that requries me to start with a belief”. All religions require a “leap of faith” regardless of how inane their beliefs may be. Advances in science have led to threats of torture if they tended to upset the framework of beliefs held by religious leaders, for example, Galileo was charged with heresy and threatened with torture for promoting the idea that the Sun was the centre of the universe and that Earth rotated around the Sun. Common sense has no place in organized religion, nor do the laws of physics.

Politics operates in a similar way, particularly in democracies. At their heart, democracies are popularity contests and those who rise to power do so if they can persuade enough people of a set of policies or beliefs that garner the most votes. Like religious leaders, political “would be” leaders found it beneficial to promote a fear that they claim only they can alleviate. In the words of H.L. Mencken -

Mencken’s wisdom included another famous line “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” That is certainly where we are today in United States and Canada, with current leaders incessantly advancing a claim that CO2 causes “climate change” and that society must reduce carbon dioxide emissions to “save humanity”. It is utter nonsense, but repeated so often and with such force that millions of voters believe it.

It is trivial to demonstrate that CO2 is harmless and has no material role in global warming. Here is a summary of an application of the laws of physics that anyone who completed high school should understand

Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau completed high school yet they ignore the obvious. Why? Either the climate alarm has too much appeal for its political capital or they are too stupid to get it. I suspect it is the former but I wouldn’t rule out the latter. Mencken predicted it.

That quip is not confined to the White House and applies equally to 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa. As an aside, most Canadians don’t know (and I am certain Trudeau doesn’t know) 24 Sussex was originally called “Gorffwysfa” a Welsh word for place of haven or rest, a name given the residence by its orginal owner.