I have noticed for some time that the more extreme members of the climate change movement have been surrendering scientific terminology for that which is of a more religious nature. I assumed that this was because the scientific consensus about this issue seems so protean and, at times, anything but a consensus. It appears I wasn't the only one to notice:
In the first case of its kind, an employment tribunal decided that Nicholson, 41, had views amounting to a "philosophical belief in climate change", allowing him the same legal protection against discrimination as religious beliefs.
I find myself disturbed not by the fact that environmentalism has become, at least in the eyes of a UK court, a religion; it's that religion is regarded as a mere "philosophical belief".