Frank Furedi, writing in spiked!, describes the new "carbon fast" established for Lent by Ed Miliband (Britain’s energy and climate change minister) and those oh-so-progressive, eco-minded bishops of Liverpool and London. Sigh. You couldn't make this kind of stuff up if you tried.
...The carbon fast is a semi-conscious attempt to turn environmentalism into a caricature of a religion. The idea of original sin has been reinvented as a wicked act of ‘carbon emission’. There are a number of ways that the green sinner can gain absolution. Those with lots of money can win redemption by purchasing ‘carbon offsets’; the rest of us will have to go through various rituals: recycling garbage, avoiding disposable nappies, using reusable bags, all of which provide proof of our sacrifice and faith. Those most committed to the faith will go further, of course, and stop eating meat and having babies. Those who refuse to embrace any of the above rituals are stigmatised for their moral depravity and denounced for committing crimes against the planet. The main purpose of the carbon fast, it seems, is to make people feel guilty about the fact that they have a life...
Increasingly, environmentalism is less about managing nature than pursuing a moral crusade to manage, and alter, human behaviour. There was a time when standards of behaviour were judged according to moral codes based on religion or on secular philosophy. Such moral ideals sought to provide guidance for those who wanted to lead a good life. Ideas about right and wrong were closely linked to our sense of humanity; acts were judged according to a robust system of human meaning. In the twenty-first century, however, moral disorientation means we find it increasingly difficult to give meaning to moral concepts. In a desperate search for moral coherence, many politicians and religious leaders have embraced environmentalism as a provisional solution to the problem...
