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Last updated on August 6th, 2017 at 06:01 am
Young children are easily scared, which makes them particularly vulnerable to the politics of fear peddled by apocalyptic earth doomers. The Washington Post seems to get off on this:
The boy has drawn, in his third-grade class, a global warming timeline that is his equivalent of the mushroom cloud.
“That’s the Earth now,” the 9-year-old says, pointing to a dark shape at the bottom. “And then,” he says, tracing the progressively lighter stripes across the page, “it’s just starting to fade away.”
Alex Hendel of Arlington County is talking about the end of life on our beleaguered planet.
What sort of parent would decline to intervene at this point? Alex’s, apparently:
Looking up to make sure his mother is following along, he taps the final stripe, which is so sparsely dotted it is almost invisible. “In 20 years,” he pronounces, “there’s no oxygen.” Then, to dramatize the point, he collapses, “dead,” to the floor.
Alex would be in therapy if he’d drawn a graph illustrating the increase in Islamic terrorism and staged a similar “death”.
For many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today. Fears of an environmental crisis are defining their generation in ways that the Depression, World War II, Vietnam and the Cold War’s lingering “War Games” etched souls in the 20th century.
At least they’re not bothered by 9/11. Maybe they’ve never been taught about it.
Parents say they’re searching for “productive” outlets for their 8-year-olds’ obsessions with dying polar bears.
Why not productively explain that the ursine hulks aren’t dying?
Teachers say enrollment in high school and college environmental studies classes is doubling year after year.
I’d have enrolled myself, if I’d had the chance, back in the day. Easiest courses ever.
And psychologists say they’re seeing an increasing number of young patients preoccupied by a climactic Armageddon.
Great. We’re raising a generation of jittery little Gore muppets. Stock tip: invest in bed-wetting medication and rubber sleepwear.
“For, like, the whole history of the environmental movement,” begins David Bronstein, 19, a freshman at St. John’s College in Annapolis, “we’ve been saying: ‘Do it for your children. We have to protect the Earth for them.’ But that argument has shifted. I’m fighting for my future.”
The destruction of Annapolis is imminent!
[Child psychologist Mark] Goldstein adds: “In my practice, they bring this up. Some of the kids are scared, and it’s interesting, because I’ve seen an evolution … Kids used to have fears of war and nuclear annihilation. That’s dissipated and been replaced by global warming.”
Thanks to the Washington Post, among others. Can an entire generation file a class-action suit?
It’s not just a U.S. phenomenon: A United Kingdom survey, by the Somerfield supermarket chain, of 1,150 youngsters age 7 to 11 found that half felt anxious about global warming—and many were losing sleep over it, convinced that animal species will soon die out and that they, themselves, will be victims of global warming.
Yeah. They’ll possibly develop a slight tan and resistance to rickets.
After 8-year-old Mollie Passacantando, daughter of Greenpeace USA’s executive director, read a story about polar bears in class this year, the Fairfax County youngster and her friends spent recess marching around the playground with signs reading, “Stop global warming. Save the polar bears.”
Seems the natural market for global warming hysteria is in the sub-teen demographic. Well, not all of it:
A classmate taunted, “You can march all you want, but you’re not going to save a single polar bear.”
And then, hopefully, he stole her lunch.
That riled Mollie up. With her father, John Passacantando, she started a blog to get the polar bear put on the endangered species list.
“I have heard from friends and work colleagues around the country,” says Mollie’s mother, Lisa Guide, “that global warming is a subject that can be stressful to children. Mollie was so concerned … we really felt it was important to help her do something constructive.”
It might have been constructive to point her towards a creature that actually is endangered – sane children, for example. Over at Sherwood High School, the environmental club is booming:
Just under 10 teenagers were active last year; 90 have signed up this year, an increase helped by an aggressive marketing campaign and Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore is this generation’s Bob Dylan; “Truth” is its “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
How many bears must the arctic support, before we know they’re alive? (By the way … just under 10? Is that some WashPost fancy-talk for “nine”? Speaking of which … )
Nine-year-old Alyssa Luz-Ricca’s mother returned from a business trip to Costa Rica with a T-shirt of a colorful frog and the words “Extinction is forever.” Alyssa looked at the T-shirt and, she says, “I cried.”
She did? Really?
“She cried very hard,” clarifies her mother, Karen Luz of Arlington.
That explains the rising seas, then.
“I don’t like global warming,” Alyssa continues, her eyes huge and serious behind her glasses, a stardust of freckles across her nose, “because it kills animals, and I like animals.”
So do I, little one. That’s why I own a barbecue.
She dreams of solar-powered cars and has put a recycling basket for mail, office and school paper in the corner of her family’s dining room. She made another recycling box for her third-grade English teacher’s classroom at Key Elementary School and has persuaded her mother to start composting.
That’s some powerful persuading. What sections of her mother were composted first?
Marvel at any of her efforts, though, and she looks confused: Everyone should be doing all this—and more—to save the environment.
“I worry about it,” says this girl who has yet to lose all her baby teeth, “because I don’t want to die.”
Let’s hope Alyssa never learns about the size of the Washington Post’s print run, and the environment-gulping efforts involved in the paper’s distribution. Meanwhile, we should look forward to the Post turning over its 2008 election coverage to frightened nine-year-olds.
I’d have enrolled myself, if I’d had the chance, back in the day. Easiest courses ever.
Not to mention being able to show all those hot chicks how concerned you are about the environment. Add on a couple of marches, and you wouldn’t have a lonely Friday night for the rest of the school year.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 04 16 at 01:42 PM • permalink
- [I]Mollie Passacantando … and her friends spent recess marching around the playground with signs reading, “Stop global warming. Save the polar bears.”[/I]
And they say there’s no religion in the schools these days.
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2007 04 16 at 01:45 PM • permalink
- Oh, and I’m hoping that I don’t have to deal with a large segment of the next generation having been driven psychotic by all this fear mongering. I’ll be retired by the time these children are in their late teens, and I really don’t care to spend my declining years worrying about the latest crime spree by some psychotic teen ager rebelling against the system.Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 04 16 at 01:51 PM • permalink
- For. Crying. Out. Loud.
Which apparently they are. And if you were a good person you would be too. Because only bad people would not be terrifying little children into thinking they will die SOON because of global whatsis.
No wonder there is no time to teach science in the class room, nobody knows any to teach.
Besides, the prevention is simply to cower under your desk and wait for the “all clear.” Worked for nuclear annihilation drills.
grrrrrrrrr
Posted by tabitharuth on 2007 04 16 at 01:59 PM • permalink
- I remember when I was 5-7yrs old in the late 60’s taking a box and filling it up with balloons because the twits on TV said we were running out of air.
Now I wish I had kept them, I could use them as co2 bombs to devastate the planet.
Posted by hollingshead on 2007 04 16 at 02:00 PM • permalink
“I worry about it,” says this girl who has yet to lose all her baby teeth, “because I don’t want to die.”
Too late, kiddo – the weenie adults surrounding you have already killed whatever spirit you may have had.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 04 16 at 02:14 PM • permalink
- Group One of typical children:
After 8-year-old Mollie Passacantando, daughter of Greenpeace USA’s executive director, read a story about polar bears in class this year, the Fairfax County youngster and her friends spent recess marching around the playground with signs reading, “Stop global warming. Save the polar bears.”
Prognosis: Hand wringing latte sipping employment challenged leftists.
Group Two of typical children:
Seems the natural market for global warming hysteria is in the sub-teen demographic. Well, not all of it:
A classmate taunted, “You can march all you want, but you’re not going to save a single polar bear.”
Prognosis: RWDB who votes a straight Republican/Liberal ticket.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 04 16 at 02:16 PM • permalink
- Many of us remember the old “duck and cover” drills of the 60’s where we would get under our desks, as tho they could protect us from “the bomb”. I never gave one worry about getting nuked. Didnt mind the drills tho, as they usually cut inton the dreaded math class.
I did develop a short term phobia of tornados after watching the wizard of oz..(Damn you Dorothy) and it took exactly 2 days of whinging for my dad to tell me that there had never been a tornado where we lived in recorded history and to worry over something that was so unlikely was a waste of energy and would I PLEASE go outside and play so he could watch the damn news in peace!
- Times like this make me reeeeeally glad I have a nice, sensible family. My little brother is probably the only kid in Chicago, IL who’s not pitching a fit about global warming; he likes polar bears and so forth, but he’s not crying himself to sleep about it.
He once told his kindergarten classmates that there was no Santa Claus. Prognosis? Follow his brothers into the USMC, and grow up sane and healthy.
Posted by Tungsten Monk on 2007 04 16 at 02:22 PM • permalink
Great. We’re raising a generation of jittery little Gore muppets. Stock tip: invest in bed-wetting medication and rubber sleepwear.
Already done, Tim. We proudly offer for sale Pee Avoidance Clothing & Oilskins™ for bedwetters of all ages. PACO™ does the piss take all the time, and for a reasonable price. Remember, you can’t spell PACO™ without a “P”.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 04 16 at 02:24 PM • permalink
- P.S. Maybe Alyssa would like to play with some Aussie sea lions? (That would end some of those tooth worries, too. BTW, would that be speaking tooth to power?)Posted by andycanuck on 2007 04 16 at 02:32 PM • permalink
- “… My little brother is probably the only kid in Chicago, IL who’s not pitching a fit about global warming…’’
Oh, I’m sure there are lots of others, but the pressies aren’t falling all over themselves looking to interview them. And even if they wanted to, the parents would probably tell them to piss off. Anyway, “Majority of Children NOT Terrified By Global Warming’’ isn’t much of a headline.
Debi (#10) I remember those drills too, though instead of getting under our desks we all went out and sat down in the main hallway. As you say, it was a nice break from classes.
Posted by Sonetka’s Mom on 2007 04 16 at 02:57 PM • permalink
- We need to send in a bunch of these kids to lay the smackdown on the whining hippie-sprogs.Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 04 16 at 03:01 PM • permalink
- If she’s worried about global warming, why’s she composting? Composting releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere! Landfilling, on the other hand, inhibits decay in biodegradables and thus locks up carbon out of the atmosphere.
Similarly, stop recycling paper! Every gram of carbon in paper that’s recycled is carbon that isn’t getting safely sequestered in a landfill. The best thing to do is to landfill the paper, cut down trees to make more paper, and then plant new trees to convert even more CO₂ into paper.
Posted by Warmongering Lunatic on 2007 04 16 at 03:16 PM • permalink
- o/t Kids have a lot more to worry about than weather. The news is just in that a gunman has murdered 32 students at Virginia Tech. The link is an aol news link, so it may not work for everybody.
- This is freaking child abuse, as bad as when the PETAns were harassing children right in front of their parents.Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 04 16 at 03:34 PM • permalink
- My kid will be enrolling in Gore Youth when the time comes, count on it. Might even be worth it, if they ban the mobile phones.
- This method of filling kids with fear was the same tactic the ‘progressives’ used in the 70’s and 80’s with nuclear holocaust and resulting ‘nuclear winter’ and so forth. They hated Ronald Reagan, because he told their ‘mentors’ in Moscow where he stood.
So consequently you had little ‘ideologues’ spouting the ‘collective’ line of propaganda about the end of the world, and looking ‘oh so cute’ blaming Ronald Reagan and ‘his warmongering White house’. We all know how the Left were wrong about that and they still seem traumatised.
Some of these people, I think, are among the sickest SOB’s for even doing this to impressionable young minds. I include some members of the education fraternity in this category.
- I look on the bright side.
Kids are young (well DUH), ignorant, lacking in common sense, but very often quite bright.
In 10 years time, they will realise that they aren’t dead, NYC is not underwater, and lots of Lefties have lied to them. This will breed a healthy scepticism in them.
Some of them, anyway.
- #18 Warmongering Lunatic: you’ve touched on a very interesting point regarding paper recycling there. The more trees you cut down to make fresh paper, the better for the environment. The trees cut down are adult trees, which are then replaced by new baby trees. A growing tree absorbs much more CO2/releases more O2 than an adult one, not to mention the energy used in the actual recycling process.
So if you want to save the environment: STOP RECYCLING.
Which almost makes me want to start recycling now.
Posted by brucey bonus on 2007 04 16 at 06:59 PM • permalink
- #13 See, the baby seals grow up into really big dangerous things.
A buddy of mine was attacked by a giant sea lion while diving around South New Zealand. He had a black neoprenme dry suit and the sea lion thought him competition. He keeps the old suit just to show off the puncture marks.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 04 16 at 07:05 PM • permalink
- Gore is this generation’s Bob Dylan
Well then let’s hope, like Dylan, he gets over his stupid, earnest phase. Dylan started as a typical leftist know-all ‘protest singer’. Then disappointed the Stalinistas by singing: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now”. In short, he was an early neo-con.
But, you see Dylan had talent. Unfortunately, I think Al Gore is more Pete Seeger than Bob Dylan.
- #33 Yes, and insist on plastic bags and always throw them in the garbage. Every single carbohydron hydrocarbon molecule removed from the environment, as buried in a hole, must be good for the environment.Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 04 16 at 07:19 PM • permalink
- #38 Are you telling me my girlfriend met Armaggedon last night?Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 04 16 at 07:20 PM • permalink
- This is getting out of hand. It seems adults are going way beyond wanting to encourage children to be aware of the environment and have some strange psychological need to scare them as much as possible.
And it’s totally unnecessary. You don’t need to scare young kids to encourage them to do things good for the environment. Even in pre-GW days parents had a stick to hit us over the head with if we had long showers or left lights on. It was the cost. All you have to do is tell young kids that it costs money so damn well conserve water and electricity. You can save the propaganda for when at least they are old enough to have some understanding.
- I’d like to ask my fellow members of the duck and cover, back-yard bomb shelter generation, did you live in fear?Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 04 16 at 07:37 PM • permalink
- Actually no Kyda. I can’t remember being particularly concerned at all. And I think kids are resilient and most don’t stress over long periods. I mean when I was a kid I thought vampires were real. But after a couple of sleepless nights over it the worry went away.
But that doesn’t exuse adults attempting to give kids psychoses over this stuff.
I’m not sure which pisses me off more: that these sorry power-hungry politicians are working to scare kids this way, or that their idiot parents seem to like it.
Scared kids/idiot parents. Think there’s a correlation there?
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 04 16 at 07:50 PM • permalink
- #43 Kyda Sylvester.
I can honestly say no. My late Father was a journalist of the ‘old school’. We were taught to question and have independent thought. We were also taught that for some ungodly reason, as we go through life, there would be people, who for what ever reason, would have their own agendas in the world. My Mother always encouraged positive thinking, and that there are bigger things in the world, than the quasi self importance of humans and their ideologies.
I use to tell my own children, enjoy your childhood while you can, because when you get older you are going to have all sorts of crap thrown at you. But it looks like, these days I have that wrong. Some are starting children on the road to ‘trauma therapy’ alot earlier.
- And these twits will wonder why the tennagers are engaging in “risk taking behaviour” and not wearing seatbelts, and smoking, and having unprotected sex, stealing, and behaving like ferals in general.
But they wont connect telling kids they have no future to the kids behaving like they have no future. Because the felt it was the right thing to do.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 04 16 at 09:14 PM • permalink
- “I’d like to ask my fellow members of the duck and cover, back-yard bomb shelter generation, did you live in fear?’’
Well, actually I did Kyda, but it was because I had a crazy mother (I mean certifiably, ought-to-have-been-in-a-mental-institution crazy) and she was a lot scarier than any hypothetical bombs. So when I was in junior high and had to listen to other kids’ prizewinning short stories about surviving a nuclear holocaust, I was more bored than anything.
Posted by Sonetka’s Mom on 2007 04 16 at 09:20 PM • permalink
I’d like to ask my fellow members of the duck and cover, back-yard bomb shelter generation, did you live in fear?
Actually… no. We went thru the drills. It was thought that we’d get about three minutes warning of the impending doom. All students and teachers with cars were cautioned to keep tanks at least half full at all times. The evacuation plan was that US41 (“The Four-Lane”) would be turned into one way all four lanes outbound. Where to was a bit unclear. We were told we were “number three” on the Soviet list of targets, because of the local defense contractor. How this was known was always unclear. But back then, the Government knew. You could count on that.
I never remember being terrified. But by this time, I’d realized that my teachers were morons; that capable, intelligent, productive people did not become “educators”; and that school was just something to put up with for the duration.
Posted by nofixedabode on 2007 04 16 at 09:44 PM • permalink
For many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today.
I was a kid when global nuclear destruction was all the rage. Can’t recall my teachers telling us we were going to be vaporised at any moment. That’s the core of the problem – teachers. They once were people who liked working with kids and took pride in the professionalism and skills thay had in teaching young minds how to read, write or do long division.
Now teachers are a bunch of unrepentent Lenin-Troskyists still trying to impose communism on a reluctant world. Couldn’t win over the adults or teenagers, so they have now started on primary school kids.
- o/t – a few posts back there was stuff about US cars not being allowed to be sold in china because they didn’t meet emission standards. well there’s an aussie connection:
GM Holden’s, the world’s largest automaker, engine plant at Fisherman’s Bend [that’ in melbourn, blairistas] has won an export contract to supply V6 engines (3.8 litre and the 2.8 litre) for the new Buick Park Avenue luxury sedan to be made and sold in China. The car will be built at Shanghai General Motors Jinqiao plant and will be based on the Holden Statesman with a completely redesigned interior to suit local demands. The Buick Park Avenue has been revealed for the first time in China and will become the first vehicle to go into production outside of Australia using the global rear-wheel-drive architecture developed by Holden. The V6 engine export deal is expected to be worth multi-millions in export earnings for GM Holden over the next few years. Holden now supplies engines built in Victoria to Italy, South Korea, Germany, Thailand, South Africa, Sweden and China. Holden’s engine export program generated over $570 million in revenue in 2006.
- 56, Dave – yes, you should, as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, I’d suggestlittle Mollie’s blog is written by her child abusing old man. Don’t you just love it when an adult thinks it makes writing look kid credible just by missing a few capital letters and using multiple exclamation marks – and forgets to misspell a few words? The whole blog (or at least as much I could stomach) sounds like a bad copywriter’s idea of what a child sounds like.
— Nick
Posted by The Thin Man Returns on 2007 04 17 at 06:22 AM • permalink
- Nothing like getting into a congressional majority to make Democrats travel by air more, spewing out CO2 as well as costing heaps, reports Powerline.
- Composting? Doesn’t that produce large amounts of methane?
Have they made recycling economically (and resource) viable yet, or are they still working on that?
And did people opposed to nuclear power because it is subsidized opposed recycling too?
“I worry about it,” says this girl who has yet to lose all her baby teeth, “because I don’t want to die.”
I hope the schoolyard taunter teases her about the fact that everybody dies and in probably less than 200 years not only will she be dead but]everyone she has ever known in her entire life will be dead too.
She’ll probably make a sign and picket.
Posted by Col. Milquetoast on 2007 04 17 at 08:25 AM • permalink
- It’s really no laughing matter. I grew up like that, and wasted the first thirty years of my life essentially doing nothing, because the social workers at the public schools I was forced to attend had me absolutely convinced that I and everyone I cared about would be dead in the ecological apocalypse that would hit by the year 2000.
Those fuckers stole my youth with their self-serving lies, and I’ll never forgive them. Now I do anything I can to protect others, especially children, from their cult-like brainwashing.
Posted by Tatterdemalian on 2007 04 17 at 08:48 AM • permalink
- I’d like to ask my fellow members of the duck and cover, back-yard bomb shelter generation, did you live in fear?
Nope. Moreover, I recall even as a child regarding with contempt both classmates and teachers prone to we’re-all-gonna-die! hysterics. I was fortunate in having a pair of sensible, intelligent parents who sat down with my brother and myself, evaluated the likelihood (scant) of a nuclear bomb detonating in our vicinity, and discussed what to do if it did. My family isn’t much given to panic, it being impractical at best and counterproductive at worst.
- 54:
Not all teachers have gone over to the dupe side. Some of us still fly the flag of reason. Few, but still some.
As for the disgraceful goings on, it is sheer child abuse. Frightening children witless just to serve a political objective is quite vile.
Posted by Simon Darkshade on 2007 04 18 at 04:26 AM • permalink
and while climax perfectly describes an Armageddon,
I believe les Françaises call it “the little extinction.”
Honh-honh-honh! The whole week, I am here. Try the veal.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 04 18 at 10:20 AM • permalink
- And a wafer-thin mint.Posted by andycanuck on 2007 04 18 at 07:09 PM • permalink
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Geez, kids these days. When I was a kid we’d find a tennis ball and a broom handle and play stickball.”