Peter Walks for Democracy

Earlier this week, new Environmental Destruction Agency Administrator, Lee Zeldin, said “We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.” Using the word “religion” as an insult is self-defeating. Here’s why.

He’s implying that religions are disconnected from reality. The natural conclusion of this is that religions should not be trusted. That includes Christianity and the sects informing the current administration’s policy. All things being equal, the entire Trump platform in Project 2025, which is fueled by hard-right white Christian nationalism—clearly a religion—should be ignored, too. That’s fine with me. But it’s not what he’s after.

Rationally speaking, most of us actually understand that climate change is real. It is not a religious orthodoxy. It’s a pattern of change over time driven by increased greenhouse gas emissions, largely from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation. Any person who honestly approaches the issue with an openness to reality can understand this. One need not have a belief in one god or another to accept it or reject it. It’s independent of faith.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, “[W]hen different experiments give you the same result, it is no longer subject to your opinion. That’s the good thing about science: It’s true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works.” Humans have been running an atmospheric experiment for about two centuries. The result has been the same: more greenhouse gases = more heat = more rapidly changing climate. Apparently, if you believe in Zeldin’s god, though, you can’t see this. This is a very strange god in my opinion. What sort of god wants you to deny reality? What sort of god not only wants you to deny reality but also insist on an anti-reality dogma that says, “Pollution is godly”? The natural conclusion of that position is that we should be able to poison one another with impunity. Aren’t these folks pro-life?

Most of us—religious people included—are capable of looking past this. People from all faiths and no faiths experience climate change and understand it. We don’t need to take it as a matter of faith. Our own senses and memories show us the consequences. Families in Paradise, California, Asheville, North Carolina, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania know what it’s like to have schools shut down from fires, storms, and heat waves. There is no doubt—zero—that these events are all more likely and worsened by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.

So let’s be honest about something: Zeldin is insulting religion and science at the same time. We can all understand it’s political cynicism to advance an inhumane agenda that only helps big polluters.