Take a walk, of any length, down Pier 54, and you’re in for a serene, near holy experience. Currently occupying the pier is the Nomadic Museum, a temporary art gallery consisting of architecture by Shigeru Ban and photography exhibit titled “Ashes & Snow” by Gregory Colbert. Together, the two artistic elements of this effort give concrete visual terms to an ideology as pervasive as it is pernicious: environmentalism as the new, modern religion.

The museum itself is a long, narrow structure built – on a monumental scale – from used shipping containers and paper tubing for the roof and columns. The architect, Mr. Ban, works often with such sustainable and recycled materials to show their versatility. Aesthetically, what’s striking about a visit to the inside of the museum is how much it looks and feels like a cathedral. A walk down the long center aisle truly feels like a walk down a grand nave, with a lofty ceiling and mammoth scale that makes a human being feel tiny, almost inconsequential.

But the religious aspect of this endeavor runs deeper. The museum houses 200 large-scale works by Mr. Colbert that depict man and nature seamlessly inhabiting the world together: There are people curling up against elephants, boys leaning against large felines, enormous birds flying over individuals. Printed on handmade Japanese paper, the images have a gritty, unrefined texture. There are long sheets of exquisite handmade paper that hang from the ceiling and reach the floor like flat curtains.

The idea in the photographs is clear enough: Man and nature can live in respect and harmony. The placement of these images, however, suggests that such a belief is worthy of worship. Each photograph is positioned between cardboard columns, in one bay after another, just as Stations of the Cross would be placed in most Catholic or Protestant churches. Taking in each photo feels very much like stopping, looking, and thinking (or praying) at the representations of the Biblical story placed evenly along a church’s walls.

Take it from the architect himself: “I believe the building will successfully frame context for viewing the work of Gregory Colbert, which in my mind poetically integrates man’s interaction with nature.” There is a spiritual element here. There is a deist element, too. But there is also something more at work.

While the worth of this photography is a matter left to art critics, I’ll bet that reproductions of these works are fast on their way to college dorm rooms. They’re the sort of thing that announce to fellow budding scholars: “I am an eco-sophisticate. I worship nature.”

Which is all well and good except when environmentalism becomes a matter of faith, there are real-life repercussions. And for a prime example, one need look directly below the Nomadic Museum: at the Hudson River.

Next summer, a 40-mile stretch of the Upper Hudson River will be dredged for PCBs that General Electric’s plants dumped in the water decades ago. GE will do so at the recommendation of the Environmental Protection Agency, which proposed the clean-up method.

Before the EPA’s order came down, GE campaigned with the argument that dredging the river would churn up the PCBs, whereas they would otherwise be buried under silt. The river could be allowed to renew itself naturally, and with an added acceleration process. Sixty upstate communities along or near the river, which arguably had the most to gain, opposed the dredging on the basis that the massive effort would disrupt their ways of life. Plus, all that contaminated mud has to go somewhere, probably the local landfill.

If you doubt the seriousness of their concerns, consider that in order to manage the effects of the dredging process, the EPA has now created a series of “quality of life” standards for the clean-up. Just the explanation of why the agency created the standards says a lot:

These standards were developed to reduce the potential quality of life impacts of dredging, sediment processing, transferring and dewatering, and support operations on people, businesses, recreation, and community activities in and along the Upper Hudson River. EPA fully considered public comments on the standards for air quality, noise, odor, light, and navigation before they were finalized.

But the upstate towns and General Electric never really had a chance. The EPA wanted the river to be dredged from the start. Is it even remotely conceivable that GE could have convinced the EPA to adopt a newer technology and a different approach to the clean up?

Not likely. The EPA had faith on its side. GE was already at fault for having dumped the PCBs in the first place – and as a result, no argument, regardless of its ultimate veracity, could be accepted. And this is where environmentalism-as-religion rears its head. Regardless of the merits of dredging or not, belief and emotion are more powerful than reason when it comes to the environment.

What that translates to, in real life, are dewatering and sediment transfer facilities for the Upper Hudson and art exhibits – in which monks and elephants genuflect before each other – for the Lower Hudson.