In a story from alternet, there are a couple of interesting quotes from a Ford Motor Company christo-fascist, who seems to believe among other things that the earth is only 10, 000 years old, and thus all fossil fuels just can't be any older than that. I guess that the subtlety of things like carbon-14 and potassium-argon dating are just a wee bit more than his eensy little intellect can handle...math above a third-grade level probably gives him a headache, and his take is, I'm sure, that mathematics were designed by the devil to influence skeptics.

In his book "The Carbon Wars," Greenpeace activist Jeremy Leggett tells how he stumbled upon this otherworldly agenda. During the Kyoto climate change negotiations, Leggett candidly asked Ford Motor Company executive John Schiller how opponents of the pact could believe there is no problem with "a world of a billion cars intent on burning all the oil and gas available on the planet?" The executive asserted first that scientists get it wrong when they say fossil fuels have been sequestered underground for eons. The Earth, he said, is just 10,000, not 4.5 billion years old, the age widely accepted by scientists.

Then Schiller confidently declared, "You know, the more I look, the more it is just as it says in the Bible." The Book of Daniel, he told Leggett, predicts that increased earthly devastation will mark the "End Time" and return of Christ. Paradoxically, Leggett notes, many fundamentalists see dying coral reefs, melting ice caps and other environmental destruction not as an urgent call to action, but as God's will. In the religious right worldview, the wreck of the Earth can be seen as Good News!

Some true believers, interpreting biblical prophecy, are sure they will be saved from the horrific destruction brought by ecosystem collapse. They'll be raptured: rescued from Earth by God, who will then rain down seven ghastly years of misery on unbelieving humanity. Jesus' return will mark the Millennium, when the Lord restores the Earth to its green pristine condition, and the faithful enjoy a thousand years of peace and prosperity.

If our environmental policy is being rewritten by wealthy corporate clones like this guy, our planet may soon look like the arid, oxygen-free dustball that has been envisioned by science fiction writers for generations. Unfortunately, the sci-fi authors always used the premise that the eventual destruction of this planet was the impetus for a diaspora to the stars. With the current state of NASA and manned space program research and funding, we'd be lucky to get a vessel to take us all to Johnny Rockets in the mall, much less Alpha Centauri or something.

This insane belief that all science done before the 1600 Crew came to power is somehow "junk science" or "incomplete work" is as dangerous to us all as the Patriot Act and its proposed sequel, just less well known. It's something that bears watching and might be yet another way to get the 'greens' onboard.

No difference indeed, just a group of fanatics who believe in the boogeyman and fairytales, ruining the earth and ensuring that we all suffer to make them happy.