They may think their racket is new, but it's simply the same old game the evangelists have played for centuries, dressed up in a jargon more effective for audiences born in a scientific age. No More the efforts of Christian fundamentalists to interpret current events as the fulfillment of ancient prophecies foretelling humanity's final days. Each generation of fundamentalists, Boyer explains, has thought that it was living in the end-times, and each generation has been willing to pay to hear and read about humanity's imminent demise. Rabbi Daniel Friedman, of Deerfield, Illinois, considers environmentalism to be a lay rehash of end-times mythology. The source of evil isn't Satan but the industrial revolution, technology, productivity, and capitalism.
Redemption is to return to that Eden-like state of nature before man's corruption of Earth.
Instead of Adam and Eve, the Burning Bush, and the Splitting of the Red Sea, environmentalism has alar, acid rain, asbestos, dioxin, global warming, and ozone depletion. Take the acid rain scare, for example, which enjoyed a brief popularity. We found, however, that the average Adirondack lake is no more acidic now than it was prior to the Industrial Revolution. The sea is starved for nutrients, and it has its own bacteria that eventually break down petroleum products and other hydrocarbons. These oil-ingesting microorganisms at the bottom of the food chain are themselves ingested by the predators along the chain all the way up to the fish, which are themselves eaten by sea birds and humans at the top of the chain.