For Jerry Brown, it was never about science.  Or, for that matter, spirituality.

On confronting global warming, it's all about coercive government power:

"It's not just a light rinse," Brown said. "We need a total, I might say, brainwashing. We need to wash our brains out and see a very different kind of world."

Brown was addressing a global warming conference in of all places, the Vatican.

The science blog Watts Up With That and Instapundit commentator Sarah Hoyt point out that brainwashing to get people to accept something isn't exactly the norm of scientific inquiry, which involves questioning and testing and research, coming to conclusions based on empirical evidence, and the pursuing the conclusions further wherever they may lead.

Brainwashing is so much easier.  Because that's how science works, you know, by brainwashing, wrote Hoyt.

Brown doesn't fare any better on the spiritual plane, which, according to Politico, he seemed to think he was combining with his non-science.

The National Catholic Register's Joan Desmond points out that Brown's resort to brainwashing is at odds with Catholic spiritual teaching:

True enough: Brown has not achieved perfection. And perhaps this failure has led him to dismiss the value of his traditional Jesuit formation. And maybe he no longer believes in the power of the Holy Spirit to effect personal change – and by extension – social transformation.

That is surely one way to interpret the governor's casual reference to the need for "brainwashing."

So Moonbeam has been shot out of the water on both the science and the spiritual fronts in his plea for global brainwashing over the issue of global warming.

That leaves one thing to explain his idiocy: he's calling for a cult.  And global warming already is a cult, given its hostility to science and its substitute-religious qualities.

Brown wants to make it a real cult.

Like maybe Heaven's Gate?

Presumably with Brown as the cult leader.  Like all cult leaders, he practices hypocrisy – one set of laws for himself and one set for everyone else.

In the Sacramento Bee's piece on Brown, he bloviates on the awfulness of greed at the Vatican, blaming humankind:

The problem ... is us. It's our whole way of life. It's our comfort[.] ... It's the greed. It's the indulgence. It's the pattern. And it's the inertia.

In WattsUpWithThat's item on Brown, the blogger points to a comfortable retirement ahead:

Perhaps retirement is what Brown had in mind, when Jerry Brown instructed state regulators to survey his Northern California ranch for oil in 2015. Despite the disappointing results of the survey, income from Brown's land holdings, his governor's pension and whatever other investments he has accumulated should make for a comfortable retirement.

Meanwhile, the National Catholic Register's Desmond points out that Brown, who is wrapping himself in Vatican spirituality as justification for his views, has a pretty long record of signing legislation at odds with Catholic teaching.

Back in California, Brown has embraced a vision of social transformation that contradicts Pope Francis' teaching. As governor, he has signed legislation that legalized physician-assisted suicide, expanded access to abortion, and targeted crisis pregnancy centers.

Cultie leaders never need to carry on the same laws they apply to the rest of us.  Now that Brown is advocating brainwashing, he's let the cat out of the bag.