All of us I think have been puzzled by the climate deniers who are not being directly paid by the oil companies or indirectly through the American Enterprise Institute. What on earth is motivating the people who litter every climate change story on Huffington Post with outrageous statements? What on earth makes them happy to see the Earth trashed? Or even willing to gamble on the Earth being trashed?
One answer is fairly obvious: Greenhouse temperature rise is a massive refutation of the proposition that the world should be run by businessmen for businessmen. It is the inconvenient truth of what happens to a planet when unrestrained capitalism runs rampant. For the true believers (those who have already become rich through unrestrained capitalism, and those who hope, one day, somehow, to do so) the fact of increasing CO2 must be rejected, otherwise their touching, evangelical, belief in the virtues of Wall Street and Wal Mart might have to be re-examined. Here for example is a response to the latest George Monbiot article on the IPCC report in The Guardian - 'Oh no, we can't have a solution that doesn't turn the world back to the stone age, with everybody living in squalor and mind boggling poverty, can we. That really wouldn't do, eh? We're going to solve this problem and maintain capitalism whether you like it or not.' Be careful for you tread upon my beliefs.
Now while this sensitivity on behalf of a failed economic theory explains some of the responses, I have long thought there must be some other strand of belief that I was unaware of that was driving the bitterness and anger when some people were told the ice caps were melting and storms were increasing. And now, thanks to Frosty E. Hardison, the last piece falls into place. Frosty (I hope I can call him that, it is impossible not to) you will remember is the evangelical in Seattle who demanded that his child's school not show An Inconvenient Truth. Part of his reasoning we are all familiar with, though it is rare to see it expressed so openly - he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day. So far so bad, but we all know about the evangelical madness called the Rapture and its relationship to environmental questions (get rid of the trees). But Frosty had more to say - 'you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming'. You see? This is 'my country right or wrong' carried to new heights. It is triumphalism (greatest nation EVER TO EXIST!) carried to extremes.
So it all becomes clear. If you criticize the war in Iraq, or the GWOT, then you are traitors, giving comfort to the enemy. If you point out American contribution to CO2 levels, and American obstruction of any attempts to deal with the problem, then you are also a traitor. But which enemy does Frosty (I can't help it) think Al Gore is giving comfort to? And does climate change patriotism remove excess CO2 from the air?
Evangelicals - can't live with them, can't live with them.