Thirty five years ago, on this day, July 9th, 1990,
Is God a greenie? Such a question should make an infinite number of angels dance on their pin-heads later this week, as representatives from all Australian churches sit down to reach a consensus answer.
However, my ecclesiastical contacts tell me that the “Greener than Green” Christians have stitched up the numbers and that the conference will pronounce that He is at least medium green and that mining companies etc are the equivalent of Beezlebub.
Clark, D. 1990. Green Christians’ 12 commandments. Australian Financial Review, 9 July
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 354ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was you can worship God or Mammon. Many managed to convince themselves they could do both. To cover their sins (to themselves) they adopted a supercilious patronising tone, like the twuntish author here.
The specific context was that from 1988 to early 1991, rich people felt obliged to pretend to care.
What I think we can learn from this is that you can worship God/Gaia/the biosphere (pick your name) or you can worship Mammon.
What happened next. We worshipped Mammon. And now comes the bill (or “check” if you’re an American).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
July 9, 1962 – rainbow bomb parties as hydrogen bomb explodes
July 9, 1965 – “Spaceship Earth” is launched, trying to get us to see our fragility (didn’t work)
July 9, 1987 – “Unpleasant surprises in the greenhouse” warns Broecker
July 9, 2004 – David Bellamy jumps the shark on climate change
July 9, 2008 – President Bush operating at his peak intellectual capacity