Belief is not Enough

In this week's Camino a Ítaca I take a look at how extreme religious belief can warp the way believers perceive events like climate change. Click over to read the originally published piece in Spanish in el HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

We’ve been spared. The summer of horrors from around the world left us relatively unscathed. June to August was the planet’s warmest such period since records began in 1940, according to data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. And not just by a little bit. Here in Extremadura we may have had a few intense heat waves, but nothing in comparison with what other places have suffered around the globe.

From the biblically apocalyptic wildfires that brought smoke to the skies of Spain frommy homeland across the Atlantic in Canada, to those that ravaged Greece and Turkey, it’s been a summer of climate terror elsewhere.

Not that we have totally been spared. The early summer fire in las Hurdes could have just been a harbinger of things to come if it hadn’t been for that brief period of rain in June. Then the terrible fire in Tenerife acted as just another reminder what could happen here.

And then there are the typhoons, hurricanes and flooding. Hong Kong suffered its worst rains since records began 140 years ago, while places like South Korea, India and Sudan were hit by record flooding. Closer to home, a late summer DANA led to not only destruction but also death in Madrid.

But if those storms looked terrible, to add insult to injury after the deadly fires in Greece, a cataclysmic cyclone saw more than half a metre of rain fall on the country in less than 24 hours, also causing death and destruction.

Reactions vary to all these ominous portents, but there are still some who are in complete denial. Like the new consejera de Vox en la Junta de Extremadura, al frente de Gestión forestal y Mundo Rural, Camino Limia who tried to make a joke in response to a tweet warning about the forthcoming DANA in Madrid.

“Iremos preparando 'el arca' de Noe, puesto que las Arcas ya sabemos quiénes las están llenando con estos vaticinios apocalípticos.”

(rough translation: We need prepare Noah's ark, because we know who is filling their 'arks' (coffers) with such apocalyptic forecasts.)

It sounds like something someone might say after one too many gin and tonics, but this wasn’t at the bar. This was a consejera speaking publicly, making light of horrendous climate events that ended in several fatalities.

And while exceedingly unfortunate, her comment offers a revealing insight into the way she and her coreligionists perceive the world. The neofascist party that Maria Guardiola welcomed into government, after repeatedly swearing she wouldn’t, has never hidden its National Catholicism roots.

A ‘belief’ that leads its more extreme devotees to believe that things like climate change are a hoax spread by the illuminati because it would go against their ideal of a benevolent deity with a preordained plan for a world where man is welcome to subdue the earth and have dominion over every living thing.

Beliefs like this are as frightening as the climate emergency because they give the ardent believer an excuse to stop thinking. To stop questioning because their religious belief states that all is decided as a matter of faith. And religious faith can give people a sort of hyperbolic confidence. A dangerous action which paralyzes their critical thinking and leads them to obviate fact…especially in a public official.