Conservationists can learn a lot from religion    • Article by:
GREG BREINING   • Updated: May 19, 2012 - 5:27 PM  Religion and
conservation wander a wilderness of alienation. If only they
could see their common signs.   Photo: file, Star Tribune
CameraStar Tribune photo galleries  Cameraview larger  The
Republican presidential nomination contest revealed the divide
separating religion and conservative politics on one side and
conservation values on the other.  Mitt Romney turned from an
advocate of reducing greenhouse gas emission to a complete
agnostic on the subject of global warming. Newt Gingrich killed
the chapter on climate change, the signature environmental
concern of our age, in his upcoming book on environmental
problems.  And Rick Santorum pronounced, "The Earth is not the
objective; man is the objective" -- as though one had nothing to
do with the other, and the solution to surviving a compromised
Earth is to wait until the afterlife. Or flee to Gingrich's moon
colony.  In short, the gulf betwee