Time to abandon "Environmentalism as Religion" - Michael Crichton

While I was looking for his prologue from Jurassic Park, I stumbled upon this Michael Crichton speech from 2003, titled Environmentalism as Religion.  Crichton has been outspoken against the 'conventional wisdom' of global warming, so that he would write on this subject is not a surprise.  That, however, does not detract from the well-written message.

An excerpt is here:

I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

(I was looking for the Jurassic Park prologue as part of the Charlton Heston entry, as Rush had played a 1995 call where Heston read that prologue on air. It was priceless, between Heston's delivery and Crichton's written word)