Asking kids to spy on their parents (again)

By Ed Lasky

In the days of Stalin and Mao, school children were encouraged to rat out their parents for politically incorrect thoughts expressed at home. Now it is the turn of the greenies in Europe to ape the totalitarians. David Pryce-Jones reports at National Review Online:

In his column in the Sunday Telegraph Christopher Booker specializes in reporting the idiocies and horrors that are flooding over us from Europe. The latest comes from a German-owned energy company called npower - all in fashionable lower-case letters. This company invites children to "save the planet" by becoming "climate cops." Children are supposed to spy on their parents, relations and neighbors, and catch them out for such "crimes" as leaving the TV on standby, putting hot food in the fridge or failing to use low-energy light bulbs.

Barack Obama -- last seen promoting tire gauges as the solution to our energy crisis and flip-flopping on offshore drilling (even his Senate supporters cannot translate his views toward such drilling) -- has in the recent past scolded Americans for our bad habits:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,"

Now the Germans have an idea that Barack Obama -- who undoubtedly looks eastward and leftward for his views -- may consider should he assume the Presidency:

The Hitler Youth morph into proto-environmentalists in Germany

Maybe they can be drafted as part of Barack Obama's "civilian national security force."