Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? “Well, it’s burned to a crisp by global warming.”
That seems to be the message for kids in some schools. We know this because too many parents complain. Their children tell them we are all going to die within a few years. Because the sun will shrivel us into burnt raisins. Or because rising oceans will swamp us.
We should expect such. After all, some educators show kids Al Gore’s scary films. Or assign his scary writings. Lately they have treated youngsters to Greta Thunberg’s propaganda that adults have stolen the future from today’s young people. Complete with a countdown clock. A countdown clock. For kids!
Some teachers warn kids the end is nigh. Unless we shrink our carbon footprint. We must end the use of fossil fuels, they tell the kids. Mom and dad should feel guilty every time they fill up the gas tank. They are quick to blame the latest hurricane or Aussie fires on climate change and global toasting.
Kids come home with their latest drawings and paintings that show trees and animals copping it. They come home with heads filled with anxiousness. They have been taught that global warming is destroying the planet. And that fossil fuels are evil. And oil companies are devils. And our eco systems are about to collapse.
Do I exaggerate?
One recent study claimed it found US kids suffer high levels of eco-anxiety. It claimed 82 percent of US kids 10 to 12 express fear, sadness and anger over the world’s environmental problems. Over 50 percent had apocalyptic feelings. Half the kids expressed pessimism about the future state of their planet.
Of course these kids are exposed to fear-mongering from many sources. Their fears are fed by movies and television and whatever we call the stuff they see on the net.
We can also blame the UN. Yes. One UN agency publishes a kids book that features animals who warn children that their world is melting. An owl, whale and polar bear tell a little boy they will become extinct in his lifetime.
(It is richly ironic that the polar bear reckons his lot is going to snuff it. The truth is that polar bear numbers have surged since the 1950’s.)
They tell the boy that ice melting is caused by bad people in “rich countries”. People who spew gases into the air from their “huge cars and air conditioners and the like”. The whale tells the boy that children like him should “get good and angry”.
The fact chapter blames climate change on industrialized countries. The US is a major villain in this, it says. That is because it pumps so much poisonous CO2 into the atmosphere. The book warns that New York and other coastal areas “could disappear beneath the waves”.
The King was in the counting house, counting out his money. The Queen was in the parlor, slitting her wrists.
A lot of eco-propagandists should hang their heads in shame. They have filled kids heads with fuel for nightmares and lifelong anxieties.
Many grown-ups take pride in brain-washing kids. They feel it is their duty to “educate” children about climate change monsters ‘round the next corner.
I disagree. One reason is that their preachings are hardly settled science. Thousands of scientists hold opposite or much different views about climate and the causes of any changes. Many question whether the climate is even changing much. Do the propagandists present a variety of views for these youngsters to consider? Sure they do. Right.
We should not be frightening kids with this climate stuff. No more than telling them the latest super-speed Russian missiles can destroy us within a few minutes. (Which, apparently, they can.) No more than describing for them how some rogue disease could wipe out most of humanity. (Which it could.)
There are plenty of reports that many young adults feel life on Earth is pointless. Surrounded by electronic and medical miracles they see only doom and gloom ahead. Why bother trying to achieve anything, they ask. The world as we know it is going to end in ten or twenty years.
Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? “Nah. Why bother. Nobody is going to need a sweater in the future.”
The fancy word for this kind of thinking is nihilism. There is a lot of it about these days. What a disgrace that so many of us introduce so many children to this way of thinking.
Auntie Mame reckoned that “Life is a banquet, and most poor s.o.b.’s are starving to death.”
Let us teach kids more about the banquet. If we do, they might have fewer nightmares and more sweet dreams.
From Tom…as in Morgan.
Find Tom at tomasinmorgan.com. You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com.