Glob-a-log

That’s one way of putting it, certainly…:

People who fail to act over global warming are “as guilty” as Josef Fritzl - denying our children a future, a senior Anglican bishop has warned. The Bishop of Stafford, the Rt Rev Gordon Mursell, said a refusal to face the truth about climate change was akin to locking up future generations and “throwing away the key”.

He insisted he was not accusing those who ignored the environment of being child abusers, but added that such shocking parallels were needed to make people aware of their responsibility. Fritzl, 73, held his daughter Elisabeth captive for 24 years in a dungeon beneath the family home in Austria, repeatedly raping her and fathering seven children, one of whom died days after birth.

Now, there are figures of speech and then there are Bishops of Stafford.

Let me put it like this: I will now, for the sake of argument propose that the people who listen to the sermons of the Bishop are as bad as those who cheered Hitler’s speeches – and then I follow that statement with insisting that I don’t think that the Bishop of Stafford’s admirers are Nazis but merely that the good Bishop is as mad as old Adolf.

See? You can’t just compare people with Fritzl and then claim you didn’t mean that they were child abusers. That’s just stupid – and quite cowardly as well. It’s also a bit surprising, seen the fact that Bishops are supposed to be quite good at delivering sermons. They are, after all, in the Word business and one would have expected a better knowledge and instinct from those that are supposed to deliver and interpret the words of the Lord.

What’s more, the Bishop is dead wrong when he says people need these kinds of shocking parallels to become aware of the facts of global warming. Whether those threats are as grave as the Bishop thinks is of no matter to the following fact: People don’t react kindly to anyone who compares them to someone a Josef Fritzl – and when they are through raising their eye-brows or shouting obscenities at their paper, computer or TV, they sure as Hell won’t bother to find out what the messenger did or did not mean, let alone follow his instructions.

Even worse, the Bishop is actually harming his own cause. Imbeciles like he are what the global warming deniers love. One mad bishop can undo the patient work of thousands of serious scientists. When the Bishop speaks, the deniers only have to point at him and then say, ‘See, they are all as mad as a mitre.’

So, thanks a lot, Bish: you just dug yourself a cellar that’s even bigger than the one that Fritzl built.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 21:38 and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.