Last week, a judge in the United Kingdom ruled that a “belief” in global warming constitutes a philosophical position that is, basically, equivalent to religion. Uh-oh.

The case centered around Tim Nicholson, the former head of sustainability at residential property firm Grainger. He claims he was fired from the company because of his views on climate change and his attempts to make the company more environmentally friendly.

Amazingly, Justice Michael Burton agreed with him. He wrote in his decision that “A belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.” The scope of the issues that arise from this decision is staggering. Who wins, here? As the Guardian article points out, “The judgment could open the door for people to take their employers to tribunals over their stance on a range of issues, from animal rights to feminism.” And Nicholson’s solicitor, Shah Qureshi, issued a statement that sounded a lot like civil rights era quotations but lacked even a hint of irony.

Yes, the case sets a precedent in the UK that one cannot be fired for trying to save the planet. I guess. But it also opens up a giant can (more like a silo) of worms that goes entirely counter to Nicholson’s apparently hardline sustainability position. As Andrew Leonard at Salon.com put it, this is “manna from heaven for the climate skeptic brigade.”After all, we’ve been faced with the religion comparisons since Michael Crichton said that “one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism.” Even more recently, one of the (many) lines in the new book SuperFreakonomics that set off a firestorm somewhat offhandedly joined this fray: “Any religion, meanwhile, has its heretics, and global warming is no exception.”

Labeling a movement that has everything to do with science and nothing to do with belief or spirituality a religion is exceptionally dangerous. Suddenly the bashing from the fringes sounds a lot more reasonable when a judge agrees that believing in climate change is largely no different from believing in Jesus’s resurrection or Buddhist reincarnation.

And there’s another issue. An article at The Register pointed out that if climate change “believers” can claim discrimination based on their environmental views, so can climate change deniers. How will that distinction, as well as all the other philosophical or scientific beliefs that may now come under this interpretation of the law, be made by courts? The justice in Nicholson’s case offered the following five tests for answering that question:

-- The belief must be genuinely held. -- It must be a belief and not an opinion or view based on the present state of information available. -- It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life. -- It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance. -- It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

The emphasis on point number two is mine. Doesn’t something that fails that test feel sort of like, well, science? And doesn’t the overwhelming consensus surrounding global warming qualify as the “present state of information available?” After reading the tests, I’m really unsure how any judge could have arrived where he did.

In the end, it is extremely hard to tell who won this particular battle. I’m glad that people cannot be fired for trying to save the planet, but the stomach punch involved with equating science with religion tempers that celebration in a big way.

Photo via jonrawlinson

Reprinted with permission from Ecopolitology