"Because global climate change will effect [sic] us all, and those in poverty the most, it transcends religious and political divides and provides vibrant opportunities for faith communities to come together to address this global concern," implored Cassandra Carmichael, who directs the NCC’s “eco-justice” program.  A grinning Carmichael was featured in a photo with Paisley , who is shown apprehensively grasping three of his own fingers, perhaps repressing a subconscious gesture of inhospitality.  Also included in the group shot is Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, whose arms are more comfortably at his side.

The NCC’s “eco-justice” program, along with the Catholic and Jewish environmental groups, are all partners in the Massachusetts-based National Religious Partnership for the Environment, which funnels dollars from left-leaning foundations to religious groups willing to propagate environmentalist themes, especially Global Warming alarmism, through America’s churches and synagogues.  Another partner is the Evangelical Environmental Network, which was strangely unrepresented in the Northern Ireland expedition.  

A news release from the British Consulate in New York gushed that the NCC-led delegation was meeting in Northern Ireland with “local parishes, community organisations and policymakers” to “discuss an interfaith approach to climate change and environmental programmes.”  The consulate also enthused that religious groups in the U.S. have “formed highly effective alliances around the issue of climate change; they have joined together, found common ground and are working together to affect changes at the local, regional and federal levels.”  As the British spokesman explained it, these various effective religious Global Warming activists are using the “environmental agenda as a means of strengthening and broadening the peace and reconciliation agenda” in Northern Ireland .

Neither the NCC nor the British Consulate explained the specifics as to how Global Warming activism was to help foster peace and reconciliation after centuries of strife in Northern Ireland .   But the religious enthusiasts for Global Warming scare scenarios often portray their campaign, even if sometimes apocalyptic in its warnings, as ultimately therapeutic.  After all, what can be more joyously unifying than saving the whole Planet?  

"Working on climate change is an opportunity to move beyond the past and to work together for the global community to create a stronger peace at home," explained Liore Milgrom-Elcott of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, according to the NCC news release.  "The focus of our work on has been on the disproportionate impact climate change will have on people in poverty here in the U.S. and abroad," further explained Dan Misleh of the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change.

Almost every campaign by the Religious Left is about fighting poverty, which ostensibly is unifying, in contrast to proclaiming the doctrines of Christianity, which are uncomfortably controversial and never win approving editorials from secular newspapers.  Of course, for the Religious Left, fighting poverty is nearly exclusively about endlessly expanding the power and size of the regulatory and welfare state, while minimizing the freedoms of the open market and private property.  Global warming alarmism is for the Religious Left the perfect issue.  It warns of an alternative apocalypse, precipitated by uncontrolled capitalism, and offers an alternative salvation, through supranational controls that will grind down unregulated free markets.

The NCC-led crusade to Northern Ireland met with officials from the Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, Church of Ireland , and the Catholic Church.  Perhaps to some members of these Irish communions, chatting about environmental causes with smiling American activists is a pleasing alternative to grappling with the endlessly complicated animosities that historically have festered between Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants.  But they should not delude themselves into believing the American Religious Left’s claims that Global Warming activism will protect the world’s poor.  Primarily a cause for wealthy elites in the West, Global Warming alarmism advocates vast reductions in global economic growth that would incarcerate hundreds of millions into permanent poverty.

The Republic of Ireland’s amazing economic growth, fueled by tax cuts and deregulation, has lifted a once nearly Third World country into the ranks of the world’s wealthiest nations, with a per capita income now higher than Northern Ireland ’s.  How this must infuriate the Global Warming alarmists!  The Irish should abandon their new carbon-generating wealth, and return to their more environmentally friendly ways of poverty, potatoes and periodic famine.   Thanks to helpful guidance from the NCC-led delegation, some of Northern Ireland ’s churches are becoming “eco-congregations.”  No doubt they can help sound the alarm against any uppity poor people successfully escaping poverty.