Guest essay by Eric Worrall

Religious scholar and climate activist Laurie Zoloth is concerned. She is worried about people who “deny” climate change. But she is also worried about the lack of integrity displayed by people who claim to believe, but who don’t reflect those alleged beliefs in their personal lifestyle choices.

According to the Pittsburg Post-Gazette;

Laurie Zoloth is deeply convinced that climate change represents a great moral challenge for modern times. But she doesn’t spend time complaining about those who deny the scientific consensus of human-induced global warming. “What I want to think about is my denial, our denial,” she told a group of about 250 people Thursday at the conference, “Integrity of Creation: Climate Change,” which began Wednesday and continues through today at Duquesne University. It is denial, she said, to acknowledge global warming but continue a lifestyle burning fossil fuels for nonessential travel and eating foods such as meat with a high-carbon footprint. While it’s difficult to make such changes all at once, as president of the American Academy of Religion last year, she proposed that her group take a sabbatical year in 2021 by skipping the annual conference that fills the jet streams with thousands of scholars converging on one city. It would be just a step, but in reducing one’s fossil fuel use, “then we’re believable, then we have integrity.”

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2015/10/02/Duquesne-to/stories/201510020146

I find Laurie’s quest for personal climate integrity refreshing. I don’t mind that she has a different view about the alleged risks of anthropogenic CO2. Integrity is a solid foundation, which will eventually lead her to climate skepticism.

Leading climate activists who spend their lives jetting to climate conferences, or who use enough energy to power a small town, to light and heat their houses, should be an utter laughing stock. The screaming hypocrisy of jetset climate activists should utterly invalidate their self righteous demands that the rest of us make sacrifices, to “save” the planet. But curiously this rarely happens – climate foot soldiers don’t often criticise the carbon profligacy of their heroes.

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