UK court sets environmentalism on a par with religion
There’s an interesting Greenview column in the new Economist about a recent UK court decision, which says that employers may not fire people over their environmentalist attitudes, just as they can’t fire someone over their religion.
Last month Mr Justice Burton stated that anyone holding a “philosophical belief which is based on science as opposed, for example, to religion” should also be protected from discrimination at the workplace.
Writes The Economist about the case: “He (Mr Justice Burton) provided a five-pronged test to shore up the ruling: the belief must be genuinely held; it must be held for a long period of time; it must relate to something of grave importance to humanity; it must reach a certain level of cogency and seriousness; and it must not trample on existing ideas of human rights. By way of example, he said belief in the supremacy of the Jedi knights of “Star Wars” fame would be excluded, but he conceded that allegiance to the doctrines of Marxism or communism might not.”
Of course, it’s not news that environmental issues such as manmade climate change are a question of faith to many. But who would have thought environmentalism would find its way into labour legislation quite so quickly?
