I think the vatican feeling pressure for and eco-religion to take hold is not to far off.
i have been developing and conversing a theory of mine for a couple years now, which is inline with this topic. Having heard all of the excitement about 2012 and how it will be the end of the world and all that great stuff, naturally i started to look into it. now bear in mind that i am just voicing an opinion upon events and research, and am putting things together as a theory and not fact.
i found that the constellations have a 2000 year cycle and that right now we are in the age of pisces moving into the age of aquarius. 2012 is supposedly the end of the world, but i believe it is an end of an age. I think the biggest change here will be shifting in consciousness, with that being a possible shift in religious belief. as i live in america, i am subject to the belief systems we have here, with one of those being christianity. also having been dragged to church through my childhood, i learned some of the stories. jesus died 2000 years ago and he said he will be with us till the end of the AGE. so it seems like his time is running out. what religion or ideology would be next then? well, what have you seen everyday, that people are starting to preach more and more and even go so far as to enforce with laws... going green. People are starting to pray to mother earth and give tithes and offerings to the institutions(churches) that will help clear your concience of your sins against her, but not without filtering through a couple greedy hands first.
now here's the thing that bugs me about the green movement, its not a bad idea. we should respect our land, waters, and air. but it is being twisted in a way so that politicians build platforms on it and businesses around it, thus making them our new priesthood and saviors of the earth. everybody is jumping on this bandwagon, just as people in biblical days jumped on all of the religious explanations for why certain unexplainable things were happening. people accepted it because they didn't have the means or desire to investigate, so they adopted it because it wasn't a bad idea and got further taken advantage of.
the telling of stories to get a message across and further indoctrinate that message into a society isn't a new game. the style in which the stories are used to propagate, will always be changing to keep tricking the next batch of suckers. i just don't believe that making a purchase at the checkout stand is really going to impact my environment more than it is an uplifting symbol for my guilty, polluting conscience. how many people do you think that (RED) U2 ipod really saved, and how much more did sales increase for ipod when they released that? people are naturally guilty and want to help, but they are also lazy and don't want to give real effort. therfore, we have the desire for and can conveniently purchase new and fancy gadgets that will save us or new religions to believe in that offer saveness from our certain, self caused doom.