Saving the Planet, if That’s All There is?
by Kenneth Francis (February 2026)
To the decent taxpaying working– and middle-class folk of America, especially in Net-Zero Greenie Blue States: Are you coping with your massive energy bills in the aftermath of one of the worst snow storms in recent times? Bills that have risen to (circa) $1,300-plus a month (like paying a second mortage). Even with a useless heat pump, are your domestic pets shivering in the morning when you wake up from sleep and enter the kitchen for breakfast? Is that all there is to Net-Zero fanaticism?
The Godless Greenies and climate-change fundamentalists (but I repeat myself) seem to be unaware that they have a major problem with their world view on humanity and saving planet Earth: On Naturalism, Ultimate extinction is inevitable.
As I write this essay, the Sun is currently burning hydrogen at its core, but once this is used up it will expand and become a red giant, before becoming a white dwarf – the end state of stars when they have burned all their fuel. In a nutshell: The sun will incinerate the Earth, and all creatures living on it will perish. If I were a Godless (and they are mostly atheists) Net Zero Greenie, I would find it hard to get out of bed in the morning with this news.
Philosophy writer PJ Zwart describes such a cosmic state scientific eschatological state as
…according to the second law [of Thermodynamics], the whole universe must eventually reach a state of maximum entropy. It will then be in thermodynamical equilibrium; everywhere the situation will be exactly the same, with the same composition, the same temperature, the same pressure etc., etc. There will be no objects any more, but the universe will consist of one vast gas of uniform composition. Because it is in complete equilibrium, absolutely nothing will happen anymore. The only way in which a process can begin in a system in equilibrium is through an action from the outside, but an action from the outside is of course impossible if the system in question is the whole universe. So, in this future state of maximal entropy, the universe would be in absolute rest and complete darkness, and nothing could disturb the dead silence.
This is a major headache for atheists and climate-change net-zero zealots, as the beginning of the universe demands a first cause; in other words, a Creator, while the end of the universe, if there is no God, is cosmic ‘curtains’ with everything everyone ever did throughout history, including for Green activists gluing themselves to art gallery oil paintings, ultimately becoming undone and in vain.
In his book, A Free Man’s Worship, atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, bleakly laments:
That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.
Ben Pile, writing last month in the Daily Sceptic, said that according to Carbon Brief, climate sceptics are winning the argument against Net Zero fanatics such as itself, The Guardian and Ed Miliband. He added: “The ‘analysis’ from the amply funded Green Blob lobbying outfit shows that UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for the first time. The tipping point has been reached. The poles have flipped. And now those who were charged with sustaining green propaganda—and who drew excellent salaries for doing so—are left none the wiser as to how this happened.”
If true, on scientific eschatological Naturalism, that we are all doomed to extinction, then why not, to quote Peggy Lee when she sings, ‘start dancing and break out the booze, if that’s all there is?’
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Kenneth Francis is a Contributing Editor at New English Review. For the past 30 years, he has worked as an editor in various publications, as well as a university lecturer in journalism. He also holds an MA in Theology and is the author of The Little Book of God, Mind, Cosmos and Truth, The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd (with Theodore Dalrymple), and Neither Trumpets Nor Violins (with Theodore Dalrymple and Samuel Hux). His most recent books are Theology in Music: How Christian Themes Permeate Classic Songs, Theology in Film: How Christian Themes Permeate Classic Movies, and Cities of the Absurd: Strange Tales from the Dark Metropolis.