Selling Indulgences, Green-style
by Lee Duigon
"The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof..." (Ps. 24:1)
How can movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio or Cameron Diaz scold us for "causing global warming" with our cars and refrigerators, while they themselves zoom all over the world on private jets?
How is it that Al Gore, the pope and prophet of Global Warming, lives in a palatial mansion that consumes 20 times as much electricity as the typical American home?
These are not hard questions to answer.
Zillionaire celebrities and politicians can enjoy their stretch limos, heated swimming pools, and private jets with a clear conscience... because they've bought "carbon credits."
How could Renaissance popes, cardinals, and princes poison their rivals, launch wars against their fellow Christians, auction off church offices, and commit other misdeeds too loathsome to mention, without fear of spending eternity in Hell?
As everyone familiar with Reformation history knows, they bought indulgences--church-sanctioned pardons for sins past, present, and yet to come.
So, if you're a fabulously rich celebrity and you fret about leaving a nasty "carbon footprint" on the breast of Mother Earth, you simply buy some carbon credits and then jet off to the next awards ceremony. And just to add piquancy to the jest, the man whose corporation sells you the carbon credits is... Al Gore!
Gore's Generation Investment Management (GIM) firm is poised to make big money on Global Warming (for a discussion of GIM and related matters, see http://www.riehlworldview.com/...). To save the earth from mankind will be a titanic (or satanic) undertaking, requiring enormous transfers of money, power, and authority to--they hope--some kind of global government. Those who direct the growth of this ultimate statism will become rich and powerful beyond anything yet seen in history.
None of this would be possible in the face of a universal understanding of, and commitment to, orthodox Biblical Christianity. Call it what you will--the Green movement, eco-paganism, or just plain humanism--it owes its entire inspiration to a loss of faith in God and a lack of humility before His throne. It is nothing less than the latest attempt to build a tower that will reach to heaven. And, like the first and archetypal such attempt, the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), it will inevitably fail.
The earth is the Lord's, and He, not we, will decide how warm or cool it ought to be.
