Over the weekend, a group of Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preachers held yet another cult meeting where they preached all different kinds of hate. Pastor Steven Anderson of Arizona’s Faithful Word Baptist Church, for example, delivered a rant against environmentalism, saying that God created the world for us, so there’s no reason to accept climate change as real, much less an existential threat.

He claimed Al Gore was trying to protect people who didn’t need protecting,

Along the way, he denounced activist Greta Thunberg as a “sniveling Swedish brat”:

[God] formed [the world] to be inhabited. If it’s not inhabited, there’d be no point. If this Earth were just this Earth, of just animals and flowers and trees and California condors and spotted owls and three-toed sloths, the whole thing would be a waste. It’s what the Bible says. If it’s not formed to be inhabited, then it’s in vain…

…
… the world’s gonna end. And we already know how it’s gonna end. It has nothing to do with the climate. It has to do with the Spirit. It has to do with an angry God, raining His wrath. So that’s why following after Al Gore is vanity. That’s why following Alexandra — whatever the “O” stands for — Cortez is vanity. And following that little sniveling Swedish brat is vanity!

This is the danger of irrational thinking. By dismissing all environmentalists — and experts who back up what they’re saying about our world — as liberals who have some secret anti-Christian agenda, they’re more likely to support politicians who are equally ignorant or short-sighted enough that they’ll pass bills exacerbating the situation.

The mockery of a child is just icing on the cake for these people. It’s only “persecution” when people mock them. Never the other way around.