British courts have just equated deeply held beliefs about the environment to deeply held religious beliefs. Is this progress towards enlarging region’s role in the public sphere? From The Economist:

“A BELIEF in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperatives is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.” Those were the words of an English High Court judge, Mr Justice Burton, on November 3rd as he ruled that green beliefs deserve the same protection in the workplace as religious convictions.
…
At an earlier hearing on October 7th, Mr Justice Burton had asserted that “if a person can establish that he holds a philosophical belief which is based on science as opposed, for example, to religion, then there is no reason to disqualify it from protection”. He 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.

What’s with the British hatin’ on the Jedi?