I found this rather odd essay linked somewhere. At first blush it looks like the typical preaching to the choir you see from the broadsheets. Gaia is unhappy and must be appeased with the blood of the deniers! Well, they are not that entertaining, but you get the point. Instead, what we have here is a rare admission that what they are up to has nothing to do with science, but is a religious cause.

ACCORDING to a recent poll, a large majority of Americans, and roughly half of Republicans, say they support governmental action to address global warming. The poll, conducted by The New York Times, Stanford and the research organization Resources for the Future, stands in stark contrast to the vast partisan gulf in political efforts to address climate change. How could it be that so many Republicans view global warming as a problem, but so few on the right are pressuring the government to take action to address it?

A paper that Matthew Feinberg, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, and I published in the journal Psychological Science in 2013 suggests one answer to this puzzle: While the number of Republicans who say global warming is a serious problem has reached high levels, there remains a very large gap in moral engagement with the issue. We found that conservatives were less likely than liberals to describe pro-environmental efforts in moral terms, or to pass moral judgment on someone who behaved in an environmentally unfriendly way, for example by not recycling. Where liberals view environmental issues as matters of right and wrong, conservatives generally do not.

It is rare to see the masked dropped like this. Usually, the Left is waving around graphs and data that they don’t understand, but are sure proves their case, because you know, science! Here we have someone saying that it’s really a moral issue.

But why does this moral gap matter if most people now believe that global warming is a real threat? Other research has shown that people are generally reluctant to undertake costly political actions, even for a cause they think will be beneficial. After all, there are so many worthy causes competing for our time, effort and resources, and we can’t contribute to every one.

People think quite differently, however, when they are morally engaged with an issue. In such cases people are more likely to eschew a sober cost-benefit analysis, opting instead to take action because it is the right thing to do. Put simply, we’re more likely to contribute to a cause when we feel ethically compelled to.

Still, why do liberals moralize environmental issues, while conservatives do not? The answer is complex, owing in part to the specific history of the American environmental movement. A quick review of that history reveals that, while the environment has been politically polarizing since the 1960s, there is nothing inevitably liberal about environmental concern. After all, it was a Republican president, Richard M. Nixon, who founded the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.

Here you see the hive mind at work. Utopians operate in a world of “us-versus-them.” After all, there’s only one destination, the promised land. Therefore, you are either heading forward to that promised land or you are an obstacle to the tides of history. Nixon was no one’s idea of a conservative. He proudly embraced liberal economics and social engineering. In many respects, he was a proto-liberal. But, he was a Republican so he is one of the undifferentiated other the Left sees as the them.

To win over more of the public, environmentalists must look beyond the arguments that they themselves have found convincing. The next wave of moral arguments for environmental reform will need to look very different from the last, if they are to be maximally effective. Such efforts to understand others’ moral perspectives might not only bring both sides in line on this important issue, but also foster the sort of sincerity and respect necessary to sustain a large-scale collective effort.

The fascinating thing about utopians is they never seem to listen to their own words. They are just incantations that make them feel better, but make little sense to a non-believer. The writer claims big majorities are in favor of his preferred acts of piety to appease Gaia. What need is there to convince the holdouts? If a majority want what he wants, surely the elected officials, who all want what the author wants, will go along with it.

That’s because it is not a rational thing. At some level, the author and his coreligionists believe that the presence of even one non-believer keeps them from reaching the promised land. Just as ISIS is focused on purifying their lands by ridding it of every last infidel, the modern liberal obsesses over the dwindling number of non-believers in the West.

The other fascinating thing is that these utopians never take yes for an answer. That’s because they can’t. What animates their faith is the struggle. The promised land is always just over the next hill or around the next bend. Today they must valiantly struggle against the infidel so that tomorrow they can live in paradise. The fact that the Left has been triumphant for close to a century in America has brought them no closer to their goal. The promised land remains just out of reach, no matter how much ground they gain in the fight.

I used to be fond of asking these sorts of people a simple question. What would have to happen for you to feel like you won? They never have an answer. Instead, you get an answer to a question you did not ask. That’s because there are no conditions in which they will be satisfied and quit. It’s the struggle, not the victory. Environmentalism will be with us in some fashion forever simply because it is a religion, not a problem to be solved.