Environmentalism and Economics as Religion

• Author: G. Tracy Mehan III
• Pages: 153-156

153

Environmentalism and

Economics as Religion

By G. Tracy Mehan III

The New Holy Wars : Economic Religion vs. Environmental

Religion in Contemporary America, by Rober t H. Nelson. The

Pennsylvania State University Press. 388 pages.

Grizzly Man (2005), a document ary f‌ilm. Werner Herzog, director.

From the September/ October 2011 issue of

The Environmental F orum.

Who among us has not, in a whimsi-

cal or polemical moment, deployed

religious metaphors to criticize or

belittle a professional or ideological adversary

who does not quite see things the way one

might wish? at economist at the Oce of

Management and Budget genuects only at the

altar of eciency and net social benet, not-

withstanding clear statutory directives to the

contrary. A colleague at the oce worships the

job to the exclusion of family and friends. And

there is the politician who is overly devoted to

the catechism of (ll in the blank) labor, busi-

ness, feminism, or the Second Amendment.

In more sober moments, we admit that

these verbal ripostes are not to be taken liter-

ally, more products of a wicked sense of humor

than anything else.

Such is not the case with Robert H. Nelson’s

book, e New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs.

Environmental Religion in Contemporary Amer-

ica, in which he aims to deconstruct modern

economics and the environmental movement,