Re: A Califronian Saunter

Not to call you out or anything. But here goes.....

You make good points in your global change blog but I'm not quite sure where you get that religions are hoping that a saviour comes and saves them from destroying the environment. I think you know that is a very very small amount of nuts that think that. The kind that stand on corners downtown and preach fire and brimstone. You may be starting to generalise. You said it best when talking about not all muslims dance lady on the bus. Again people making assumptions about a group of people. Lack of education really. Or ignorance. Two go hand and hand.

I think that religious groups are more apt to care about the environment as that is what most religions have been called to do. Gore's movie was actually shown in 4,000 churches and synagogues in 20 states. http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/news/article/0,1713,BDC_2397_5034348,00.html

I thought this interview with Al Gore actually says it quite well.

From: David Remnick, "Profiles: The Wilderness Campaign: Al Gore Lives on a Street in Nashville", published 13 September 2004 in The New Yorker ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040913fa_fact; viewed 10 December 2005):
What's missing [from the Bush administration]? I asked.
"Families, the environment, communities, the beauty of life, the arts. Abraham Maslow, best known for his hierarchy of needs, had a dictum that if the only tool you use is a hammer, then every problem begins to look like a nail. Translating that into this discussion: If the only tool you use for measuring value is a price tag or monetization, then those values that are not easily monetized begin to look like they have no value. And so there's an easy contempt, which they summon on a moment's notice for tree-huggers or people concerned about global warming."

And yet the Bush ideology is tinged with religious belief, I said. Not everything comes with a price tag attached.

Gore's mouth tightened. A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush's public kind of faith. "It's a particular kind of religiosity," he said. "It's the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it's not going to be the source of your salvation. And the deepest roots are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back. You don't hear very much from them about the Sermon on the Mount, you don't hear very much about the teachings of Jesus on giving to the poor, or the beatitudes. It's the vengeance, the brimstone."

...We passed the Southern Baptist Convention building. Earlier in the day, Gore had made a point of telling me that he and Clinton used to pray together in the White House. I asked him which church in Nashville he and Tipper attended now.
There was a pause in the front seat.
"We're ecumenical now," Gore said, finally.
Tipper said with a laugh, "I think I follow Baba Ram Dass."
"The influx of fundamentalist preachers have pretty much chased us out with their right-wing politics," Gore added.
This was obviously a detail in a broadly painful subject. Tennessee, which was never particularly liberal, had rejected Al Gore in 2000, a loss that led to the loss of his dream.
"It makes you wonder how you ever got elected to Congress in the first place," I said.
Gore didn't deny it. "Sometimes I wonder that myself," he said.

ryan