A golden calf

Some highly original and thought-inspring lines from : http://somehavehats.typepad.com/some_have_hats/2007/07/mother-earth-is.html.
I have slightly edited the text.

The "save the planet" hysteria, regardless of the objective truth to be found somewhere in the midst of the warring scientists, is evil.

First an obligatory paragraph for the people who are hyperventilating: I like trees. I hate litter. Yes, corporate greed is a bad thing and has resulted in a lot of pollution. And yes, the rain forests and the ozone layer and the melting glaciers and the weird weather and the water temperatures ... but okay... Human beings are bad stewards of the planet. Dolphins would have done a much better job.

It seems to me that people are falling into one of two camps regarding the save the planet movement. They either embrace it and start memorizing the soundbites and/or writing checks and/or buying hybrids, or they say "Oh, piffle" and ignore it.
I want to present, for your consideration, a third option. It won't cost you a cent or make you feel guilty. It's this: see this insanity for what it is.

The people who have abandoned God, now noticing a spiritual vacuum (which, as we know, mother nature abhors), have turned the planet into their deity. Their prophets are now screaming that the people have turned against their god and are thereby bringing destruction upon themselves. I think they've got that part right -- they just have the wrong god.
The irony of worshipping the creation instead of the creator seems lost on them. (In fact, irony as a concept seems lost on them.) It's a much more convenient religion, since Mother Earth has not handed down any stone tablets, or any other revelation, to challenge her children to behavior that taxes them in any way. Recycling might take some extra effort, but it causes no ache in the spiritual muscles. No wondering why your benevolent God would put you through fill-in-the-spiritual-agony. No wrenching of the soul over whether or not littering is really evil, or evil in all circumstances. Earthism is the Mother of All Feel-Good religions.
It is not the trees and the oceans we have turned against. It is the Guy who made them."