“There are no black and white issues in life. No categorical answers. Everything is subject for endless debate and compromise,” Greta Thunberg writes in The Climate Book. “This is one of the core principles of our current society. A society which, when it comes to sustainability, has a lot to answer for. Because that core principle is wrong. There are some issues that are black and white.” According to Thunberg, one such issue is climate change.

“The climate and ecological crisis is the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced,” she writes.

Science has never done this before. From the theories of evolution and the big bang to questions about “the missing link,” science has rarely ever been dogmatic. It’s all about doubt and skepticism—until now—until climate change.

I’m not trying to pick on a 20-year-old. But one might be forgiven for thinking Thunberg was talking about religion, not climate change. She is the young, popular figurehead for a powerful dogma with a powerful clergy and millions, perhaps billions, of adherents.

But almost all of them believe they are right, not wrong. Black, not white. They have the categorical answer.

Let’s assume they do and that they’re right. What do they believe mankind needs to do? What does repentance look like for climate change believers?

You’ve probably already heard some of it before: stop eating meat, get an electric vehicle, buy less food, stop cooking with gas, and many other actions.

In isolation, these look harmless enough. But to them, these actions exist in a black-and-white world where not doing these things directly causes the greatest ever threat to humanity. This makes them not an option but a necessity. They must be embraced wholeheartedly. But is that where it stops? With all of us driving electric cars?

According to a January report from the University of California–Davis, it can’t stop until none of us have any kind of car.

Electric cars are great, the report says. But if everyone is driving one, that would triple the number of electric-vehicle batteries that are produced, which would be bad. As the Trumpet reported years ago, electric vehicles are actually worse for the environment than a fuel-efficient engine.

The solution, therefore, is “reducing dependence on private vehicles.” The report calls for encouraging biking and walking, removing free parking, curbing all on-street parking, and making “oversized” vehicles unaffordable. The movement has gone from supporting electric vehicles to supporting having no vehicles at all.

This zealotry is evident in other doctrines as well.

The report also calls for “densifying low-density suburbs while allowing more people to live in existing high-density urban spaces.” We were once told to reduce the number of flights we take. The David Suzuki Foundation says we need to stop flying altogether and take trains instead.

We were once told to move to a plant-based diet and cut out beef, lamb and dairy. But Oxford University researcher Joseph Poore says certain fruits and vegetables have a dangerously high carbon footprint.

Asparagus, watermelons, cantaloupes might have to go. Avocados, plums and mangoes use an extreme amount of water. That’s not to mention the environmental impact of artificial fertilizers to grow those crops, or how tilling fields also releases large volumes of greenhouse gases.

Even our banking habits could be bad for the environment. But it doesn’t end there.

According to a 2017 Environmental Research Letters study, getting rid of a car saves the equivalent of 2.4 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Avoiding a round-trip trans-Atlantic flight saved 1.6 tons, while becoming a vegetarian saved 0.8 tons a year.

But by far, the greatest environmental impact individuals can have is to have one fewer child. Having one fewer child will save the equivalent of 58.6 tons a year. Many climate proponents acknowledge that this is a radical idea. But it is taking root. One nbc piece headlined “Science Prove Kids Are Bad for Earth. Morality Suggests We Stop Having Them.” This is a growing trend. Morgan Stanley analysts say that the “movement to not have children owing to fears over climate change is growing and impacting fertility rates quicker than any preceding trend in the field of fertility decline.”

And so, if allowed to thrive unquestioned, the climate crusade would lead to all of us being packed together in a vegan, flight-restrictive, vehicle-free, high-density slum, forbidden from having more than one child. That’s not an exaggeration or a logical leap. When adherents believe only the extreme will save us from extinction, the extreme becomes rational—it becomes a moral obligation.

The climate clergy would be in charge of what we eat, how we travel, where we live, and how many children we are allowed to have.

The basic observations of the climate change proponents aren’t totally wrong. Human activity does cause problems. The environment is harmed by the industrial release of synthetic compounds, the replacement of forests with cities and asphalt, and the gaseous release from the exhaust of cars, planes and trains. Human beings can and should do better.

And God agrees. The Bible says God cares about how we interact with the environment. He condemns those who defile the Earth and visits His wrath on those who “destroy the earth” (Jeremiah 2:7; Revelation 11:18).

However, the Bible does what the climate crusaders can’t. The Bible and climate change theory are different in the most fundamental aspect.

No matter how dogmatic these crusaders are, the climate change doctrine is incorrect. It is propped up by a combination of shoddy science and fearmongering. There is no scientific consensus, no categorical, black-and-white, irrefutable evidence of man-made climate change. (Read our article “Greenhouse Apocalypse” to learn more.) The Bible is different. It’s out of fashion to look to God and the Bible, but that is the only source of a real, irrefutable reason for increasing weather disasters.

It says that God is in control of “the whirlwind and … the storm” (Nahum 1:3). It calls Him the Father of the rain and dew (Job 38:28). And it also says that God withholds rain and causes drought (Amos 4:7). And the Bible gives the reason why. “When the heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee …” (2 Chronicles 6:26).

The Bible makes clear that the primary cause of these weather disasters is sin, which is transgression of God’s law (1 John 3:4). No one would dispute that pornography, violence, illicit sex, drug abuse and many other problems are more prevalent today than they have ever been. As these have gotten worse, so have the weather disasters.

The Bible also gives a clear and simple solution: keeping God’s law.

“If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit,” (Leviticus 26:3-4). There is clear cause and effect. Why? Because obedience brings blessings and happiness. Disobedience brings unhappiness and misery.

God wants us to keep the law because doing so will make us happy (Proverbs 29:18). And doing so is compatible not only with eating meat and driving a car but living in a big home with a large, happy family.

The climate crusade, on the other hand, can only achieve true sustainability through eco-socialism. That is the ultimate goal of this cult. It has many millions of adherents who are sincere in their belief but are being led by people who are pretending to care about the environment in order to amass total and unquestioned power. Enough power to tell you what you can or can’t eat or drive, where you can live or travel to, or even how many children you can have.

“The governments most in favor of confronting climate change are the socialist, Marxist-type governments that want to control everything,” wrote editor in chief Gerald Flurry in the August 2017 Trumpet issue. “Climate change has become something like a religion for the radical left. They believe it as an article of faith regardless of the evidence. It is a tool they are using to increase their control.”

Natural disasters are real, tragic and devastating. But man-made climate change isn’t the cause, and the climate crusaders don’t have the answers. In fact, climate change is a deadly deception, a trojan horse being used by radical Marxist bureaucrats to attain total power.

Labeling it the greatest threat to mankind’s continued existence is the perfect justification for eco-fascists to introduce authoritarianism in the name of safeguarding human survival. And they will not rest until everyone lives in a slum, totally dependent on them for everything.

God is the solution to this dark future. His law is the answer. If we repent and turn our hearts to God, we can be happy and fulfilled living the abundant way of life that He intends for us. With God’s law, we will be free to receive His blessings and enjoy family life with love at the center.