A Methodist Noah for Climate Change

Liberal Catholic activist and Sojourners editor Rose Marie Berger has hailed Global Warming alarmist Bill McKibben as the new “Noah.”

McKibben, a Methodist Sunday School teacher who serves at Middlebury College in Vermont, has over 46,000 Twitter followers. He gave the commencement address at United Methodist Claremont Seminary this Spring. Berger highlights his recent climate call to arms in Rolling Stone. Earlier this year he was arrested and jailed during the anti Keystone Pipeline march in Washington, DC. Berger herself was also arrested.

(McKibben rallies anti-pipeline marchers)

As Berger reverently described, McKibben “just got a job from God — and it’s not an easy one. It seems to me that Bill’s been tapped to be the new Noah to our faithless generation. It’s his job to warn us that we have ‘grieved the Lord in his heart’ and that the flood waters will rise again if we don’t get back to working within our ‘original contract’ and reverse climate change.”

(Berger is arrested at anti-pipeline rally.  Tarsandsaction photo)

A big job indeed, saving the whole planet. Methodists tend to be ambitious!

“Noah’s neighbors didn’t think much of him,” Berger recalled. “And Noah himself didn’t know what he was doing half the time. But he had a job to do, and cubit by cubit, two by two, he did it. Bill’s like that.”

Berger bemoans that Global Warming fears no longer get the attention they deserve. But she was encouraged by the Twittersphere’s reaction to McKibben’s Rolling Stone appeal for “climate sanity.” Evidently “there’s still time” to “restore health to our skies, earth, and oceans, and move forward into a future where our grandkids can not just survive, but thrive.”

McKibben’s plan is for all enlightened investors to divest from oil, gas and coal companies, to levy special taxes on energy firms, and to demonstrate against the Keystone Pipeline and development of tar sands oil. Berger admits these acts may not “completely reverse climate change.” But “we’ve got to listen to Noah this time.” After all, remember last time.

It’s nice that Rolling Stone readers were momentarily excited. But getting arrested at anti-pipeline demonstrations will not affect global temperatures. If prophets of climate apocalypse are anywhere near accurate, the global industrial economy would have to grind to a virtual halt before there’s any appreciable impact.

McKibben’s counsel may help stifle economic growth, keep poor people poor, and help corrupt overseas tyrants retain their energy monopoly. It will not affect climate. But it will help yuppy environmentalists feel virtuous at minimal cost to themselves. Didn’t the real Noah demand more?