Modern liberalism as a religious revival

In the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens has an excellent article on the 'global warming' phenomenon. Before discussing the similarity of 'global warming' to previous mass movements, he reviews some science:

NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

So, what makes 'global warming' so compelling to its many true believers? He notes a few of the reasons:

Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. ....

Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like [NASA global warming evangelist] Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Yes, and you can see that gas-guzzling power-hog Al Gore is clearly in the tradition of the fundamentalist preachers who get caught with prostitutes. The bottom line is that 'global warming' appeals to that all-powerful liberal guilt complex:

Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. .... In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

This is consistent with the Obama campaign with its theme that penance leads to salvation as for example when Sen. Obama preaches that his election will be "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."