End-of-the-world alarmism has been a perpetual feature of human existence for as long as we have recorded history.
Generally, it occurs within a religious framework: Whether it is Apocalypse mania, or a fear that any moment now Ragnarök is going to erupt in earnest, lavish claims of total world destruction have always furnished the necessary motivation for extremist agendas.
The new craze about global warming ought not to surprise us. Christ warned us, in Matthew 24 and Mark 13, that we would hear rumors of war, that there will be famines and earthquakes, that false prophets would arise and lead people astray, and so forth. And what does he say that we are to do?
I never thought of Algore as a “false prophet’, but it sure does seem to indicate at least one leader in the new religion of “Global Warming.
Gloria
I’m reminded of this from an eminent historian: “The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.”
–Paul Johnson
[blockquote]…the modern population control alarmists, like the prophets of Moloch or the Aztec priests of Tlaloc, demand that human children be sacrificed in order to prevent storms, floods and disease. [/blockquote]
This is a brilliant, perceptive and fascinating analogy. Very Chesterton.