PrintMay 19, 2011
Kids 'Scared Straight' to Climate Activism
Teenagers, like many adults, are not too old to believe in fairy tales. But, youngsters typically have much more time and energy to devote to acting on their fantasies, like the one showcasing a global-warming goblin.
For example, from May 7 through May 14, kids the world over were to tramp in the "iMatter March" to convince adults that the most pressing global issues are not bloody terrorist attacks, abject poverty, tyrannical socialism, or even kooky environmentalism, but rather the planet's real peril comes from climate change.
The week before the marches, some of the participants were plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in federal court against EPA chief Lisa Jackson, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and others. The kids claimed they have a profound interest in "ensuring our climate remains stable enough to ensure their right to a livable future." Their support and talking points come from high-powered climate prognosticator James Hansen, whose sincerity and ability to convince is not in doubt. Additional support and encouragement for the youth is coming from numerous progressive organizations who have become exasperated with discerning adults.
Most adults (this excludes heavily-financed global-warming gurus and their minions) have come to realize that one of the solid truths in life is that no one knows the future. And, if someone claims to know that the Rapture will occur on May 21st, or the earth will end on December 12, 2012, or the globe will be intolerably warmer in 2050, they're usually deluded, arrogant, or both.
Well-grounded adults understand that the future is not fixed, or many simply lack the interest to care. Adults, after all, have adult responsibilities.
So, if the climate scare-mongers can't frighten the adults, the next logical step is to heap angst on their children who then frighten (or better, pester) the adults into action.
Oscar Wilde once said, "In America, the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience." What was true in 1887 is still true today, as those with limited or non-existent adult responsibilities can find the time to take up causes. However, there is a reason why 13-year-olds are not allowed to drive, purchase alcohol, vote, or hold elected office -- they simply lack the experience to do so intelligently and with maturity.
Children especially are susceptible to outside influences such as the manufactured entertainment of "organized" activities and video games, manufactured celebrities (think Justin Bieber and Khloe Kardashian), and now manufactured causes. Adults can look at the claims of the climate-change activists and contrast the activists' assertions with factual revelations such as the Climategate scandal, biased atmospheric science studies, and cartoonish distortions of scientific realities presented in political propaganda films like An Inconvenient Truth.
Children, on the other hand, typically lack perspective and discernment. Therefore, it is unfair, even unethical, for adult activists to target the young when the activists have been unable to convince more-informed, less-gullible adults of a coming global-warming catastrophe attributable to human activity.
Nevertheless, from their earliest age, children are indoctrinated to these fabricated oncoming disasters by activist progressive educators. The kids then take the manufactured causes home to their parents -- or in the case of the iMatter March, bypass their parents completely in order to teach them. As Oscar Wilde continued, "Indeed, they spare no pains at all to bring up their parents properly and to give them a suitable, if somewhat late, education."
As adults continue to "learn" from the children, and as another school year "progresses," what is needed to improve education is to teach the children to be critical thinkers and help them become more-reasoning individuals. This will assist them with the skills necessary to evaluate complex concepts like global climate change and keep them from falling prey to adults with big, scary, unsubstantiated ideas. Otherwise, the kids may grow up to be the new promoters of such ideas.
Then again, isn't that the ultimate objective of the purveyors of the global-warming goblin?
Anthony J. Sadar is a certified consulting meteorologist and college atmospheric and environmental science adjunct professor. JoAnn Truchan is a chemical engineer specializing in air-pollution regulation and control.
