Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth

Cooking the Truth: Faith,Science, the Market,and Global Warming

 Cooking the Truth: Faith, Science, the Market, and Global Warming L A U R E L K E A R N S ‘‘Have you heard the one about the rabbi, the priest, the pastor and the Toyota Prius? No, it’s not a joke. And neither is global warming.’’ So reads the introduction to an action-alert email on Faith and Fuel Economy from the Interfaith Climate Change Network (ICCN). Only I might change it to a rabbi, pastor, priest, and preacher to more accurately imply the four constituent groups of the National Religious Partnership on the Environment (NRPE),1 the group supporting the ICCN, who chose global warming in the 1990s as the one topic upon which they could all agree.2 This particular action alert encouraged individuals to bring their faith to bear on deliberations in the U.S. Congress on increasing fuel efficiency. The alert was also related to the concurrent visit to carmakers in Detroit by Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant leaders in a fleet of hybrid cars driven by Catholic nuns. The Web site goes on to ask: If God is With Me All the Time, Does that Include the Auto Dealership? As people of faith, we use religious convictions to determine the movies we see, music we listen to, and activities we participate in. If we bring God to the movies, why do we leave God behind at the Auto Mall? There is no reason to drive gas-guzzling, climate-changing cars when there are options that give us freedom and reduce the impact on our environment. Because it’s not just about vehicles, it’s about values.3 98 兩 e c os p i ri t This is one of many religious campaigns related to climate change in the United States that I have studied in my sociological research on religiously motivated environmentalism. These efforts involve a variety of approaches, as will be discussed below. But not all religious efforts on the topic are aimed at increasing awareness of the threat of global warming ; some are aimed at discrediting global warming by referring to it as a religion, a theology, or an object of belief. These voices do not just single out global warming to attack; rather, their approaches range from a rejection of most scientific theory (a result of creationism campaigns), to a dismissal of climate change as a creation of the left. Many climate skeptics aver that perhaps it will even create new positive opportunities.4 All base their objections, whether explicitly or not, in their concern that any action to combat global warming will be a threat to private property rights, free enterprise, and capitalism. The differences between the religious ‘‘pro–’’ and ‘‘anti–global warming’’ campaigns (as I somewhat facetiously call them) are too easily painted in terms of the dichotomy of religious versus scientific authority. But since actors on both sides are religious, the difference is more nuanced than that. On the surface, it does seem like a battle between the claims of religion (arguing that the science is so speculative that it amounts to a religion or theology) and science (arguing that the science is so strong that it demands a religious response). Both sides, however, in fact want to make global warming a religious issue, and not just a scientific one. The ‘‘anti– global warming’’ forces want to make it so in order to undermine the authority of the science, and thus to discredit the existence of global warming, particularly insofar as it is human-caused. The ‘‘pro–global warming’’ activists want to make it a religious issue because they believe that basing any response on just the science is inadequate, for the issue is also about values. How each side frames the issue in terms of both religion and science is a major theme of this essay. I argue, however, that just examining responses to global warming in terms of religious views concerning science can be misleading. First, following Bruno Latour’s work, the current framing of religion and science is very misleading. Secondly, the faith-versus-science framing can hide perhaps the real framework involved: the belief in the economy and the market that in- fluence the stances on both sides of the issue. l a ur e l ke a r ns 兩 99 BACKGROUND TO RESEARCH I have long been interested in how theological ideas and religious concerns are...