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Last updated on July 16th, 2017 at 10:12 am
Kids today:
Jim and Robyn Dahlin knew replacing the roof of their home in Greenbrae, Calif., would be expensive. But they hadn’t planned to spend an extra $15,000 on solar panels. For that, they have their 8-year-old son, Luke, to thank.
Thanks, Luke!
After Luke acted in a school play about global warming, he went on a campaign to get his parents to install the panels. He routinely lectured his dad from the backseat of the minivan about how reducing their energy consumption could help save the planet.
Do read on. If you’re captured by these junior Al Gore Jrs, it might serve to remind them of environmentalist views on children. For maximum impact, I’d advise reciting insane claims about the environmental damage wrought by population growth as your spouse calmly examines the kitchen’s knife inventory.
(Via David H.)
Yes, why don’t we let ignorant young sprats run the household?
There’s a “Public Service Announcement” running in the USA now featuring a half-dozen youngsters mouthing platitudes such as “if I could vote, it would be to fix the planet”.
They should be saying “I know nothing, but here in the 21st century my opinion counts as much as yours. And thanks to a lame education, I will still know nothing when I do get to vote.”
Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2007 09 30 at 01:08 PM • permalink
…and youth turnout is even smaller.
Posted by rick mcginnis on 2007 09 30 at 01:42 PM • permalink
I bet that the return on that $15K worth of solar panels is well after Luke’s freshman year in college. Assuming that the Dahlin’s are even using the system by then.
Being childless, I can’t say that I would have told my son to be quiet. That would be my first response.
I can say, with absolute certainty, that my father would not only have told me to not pester him, he would have done so after he offered to let me to get a job to pay for the solar panels.
But BEFORE he went to school to complain to my teachers.
And, to all you envirotards reading this, my father was energy conscious before it was a fad; I recall him researching this prior to the first Earth Day.
For Dad, it was only part of saving money: he also hated the idea of wasted energy in any form. And it was mostly self-taught, knowledge that he put to use in designing his retirement home. So I know of what I speak.
But Luke and his parents? Deluded fools, thanks to the National Education Association.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 09 30 at 02:07 PM • permalink
- The parents thought the public school shouldn’t promote the screening, which was paid for by a local parent, because they considered it a political statement.
James and Trish Verbeyst (with Prius)
Sally Peck, the principal of Bacich, disagrees. “We have a responsibility to educate our children,” she says.You have a responsibility to teach our children how to read, write, do math, and think, you stupid cow, not brainwash them in the Fad Of The Day.
That kid is brilliant. Those solar panels will have paid for themselves right about the time Junior retires (and long after the parents are dead).
When he’s old and frail and social security has gone tits-up because liberals wouldn’t privatize it, he won’t have an electric bill!
Posted by Shaky Barnes on 2007 09 30 at 03:19 PM • permalink
My kid goes to a hippie school and we can cut off that kind of talk by having red-hot, ass kicker cars. Kids love speed and loud engines. They know we would have to give that up to save gas, and they won’t have it.
My daughter comes back from Sunday school with all sorts of BS stories about whales and arks, and she dismisses them as ridiculous fairy tales. When they tell her about drowning polar bears at school, I’m sure she’ll just roll her eyes. School environmental activism is just another opportunity to develop a kid’s Bullshit Detector.
Posted by Matt in Denver on 2007 09 30 at 03:51 PM • permalink
Solar panels are becoming the status symbol like cell phones were years ago. Some people who couldn’t afford the real thing would buy a fake and drive around talking into it.
As usual, Japan is ahead of the game:
It’s become such a status symbol in Japan to have solar panels on your roof… that there is a company in Japan that sells fake solar panels so that you can put them on your roof and pretend to your neighbors that you have solar panels on your roof.
Rather than blow $15K on nearly useless solar panels, they could have spent a fraction of that, the kid would be none the wiser, the neighbors would be suitably impressed, and they could use the money to buy some other over-priced environmental status symbol – like a Prius.
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2007 09 30 at 03:51 PM • permalink
Hey Latino that’s a better idea than you think. We have a wattmeter on a bike here and the kids have an idea of what it takes to generate watts—a LOT of work. Kind of makes them a little more grateful about the kind of power thay have at their disposal, they can’t take it for granted. (A lot of environmentalism is about taking a good living standard for granted.) Think about what kind of staff we would need if our houses were human powered—today’s regular joe has more power at his disposal than King Solomon.
Then again, my daughter asked me how many houses my car engine could run. So we had to convert HP to watts and figure out how much power the house uses. It was a lot of houses, I was kind of surprised. The cars use way more power than the house.
Posted by Matt in Denver on 2007 09 30 at 04:13 PM • permalink
But they hadn’t planned to spend an extra $15,000 on solar panels. For that, they have their 8-year-old son, Luke, to thank.
“Well, Luke, it’s either that or three or four trips to Disney. The solar panels will employ a handful of people for a few days, then reduce our electric bills by maybe $10 a month. Going to Disney will help keep hundreds of people employed, and we’ll remember it for a life time.
“And since it’s not your money, we’re going to Disney World!”
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 09 30 at 04:15 PM • permalink
#3, Yes that’s the evil spawn of AARP, sponsored by SEIU, the fastest-growing commie union in the USA, since they represent gov’t workers. They use child actors to promulgate their program, and I’ll bet they get free air time as a “public service”.
Divided We Fail was launched to raise the voices of millions of Americans who believe that health care and lifetime financial security are the most pressing domestic issues facing our nation.
Healthcare and lifetime financial security? Say no more!
Posted by Harry Bergeron on 2007 09 30 at 04:16 PM • permalink
This is why you are not allowed to vote until you are 18.
Or drink.
Having been 18, and a complete goose, I think most people don’t develop much reasoning power or common sense until they hit at least 21 (except for the daughter of a mate, and she is more mature than me at age 12).
Around here, the only say junior has in the running of this household is “what colour shoelaces should I put in my shoes today?” (He has about a dozen pairs of different colours and patterns – don’t ask me, it’s like pet rocks).
Parents who think their kids know anything have pond scum floating around between their ears.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 09 30 at 05:00 PM • permalink
My parents were “energy conscious” but back in my day we used the term “broke.” We lived in a house without air-conditioning—but in the 60s and 70s this was not considered remarkable, even in Florida. We didn’t own seventy different electronic toys—we had one television that worked (later my parents did buy themselves a portable for the bedroom). My father kept the same car from the day I was born until I was in high school, when it finally fell to pieces. (You could see the road through the floor.) We had neither microwave, nor dishwasher (I was the dishwasher). We had one phone. It hung on the wall and had a rotary dial, and was, for much of my life, a party line. Computers for households were unknown—I had my father’s old pre-World-War-2-era typewriter.
And so on. And you know what? Life without all the nice toys we have now sucked, because we had no choice but to live that way. If these rich people want to play at camping out in their own homes and pretend they’re “saving the planet” that way then fine, whatever floats your boat, but leave me out of it.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 09 30 at 06:02 PM • permalink
Oh yeah—and if we children had dared to lecture out parents on their “wasteful ways” never mind tried to persuade them to spend some of their hard-earned cash on fripperies meant to display their environmental cred, we’d have been told in no uncertain terms to keep quiet until we were old enough to know better.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 09 30 at 06:04 PM • permalink
- That story from Japan is awesome.
Ah to be a child, or come to that an employee, and cherry pick the things you want others to spend their money on, without the motivation to discover all the hidden costs.
I have three boys (9, 11, 12), and I have to put in a fair bit of time undoing what they hear at school and explaining how the world is divided into those who make things, like money, and the rest who want to control its redistribution. But I am proud and relieved to say that kids are instinctively onto this:
A kid named Ben in my boy’s class took in an apple peeling machine to school and was peeling everyone’s apples, and someone said “you should charge money for it” and the teacher immediately said “Yes it would be great for a fundraiser” and the kids all treated this with derision, saying “Yeah, like the ‘Ben fund’!!”.Posted by ooh honey honey on 2007 09 30 at 06:14 PM • permalink
Heh. I get lectured on eating MacDonalds by my five year old at times. Especially after a weekend with her envirotard leftoid father.
Apparently maccas makes you fat. Which also leads Magilla to make pronouncements about fat people in public (luckily not in my hearing or it would be on for young and old with said child).
I have explained to her that no, MacDonalds doesn’t make you fat. Eating nothing but maccas will make you fat, so will some medicines and sometimes people are just fat even if they eat healthy and exercise regularly.
People come in all shapes and sizes.
I think when she starts the binge and purge at 7 her idiot father can foot the therapist’s bill.
I’ve not got the lectures on green energy yet; I’m expecting that next year.
Oh, and how to stop the bleating about maccas?
When I hear how it can make you, I just tell her that that’s fine. I’ll still have my quarter pounder and she can go without.
Works every time, especially when we’ve gone a week or two without takeaway.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 09 30 at 06:19 PM • permalink
We had to recycle all the paper that was used to wrap any of the presents that we got at Christmas. That meant carefully removing the sticky tape, removing the paper, folding it and handing it over to Mum for storage until next year.
Dad bought a car second hand in 1971. It was passed down to me in 1996. The only reason it is no longer on the road is that it met with a garbage truck, and lost.
The only way Dad ever managed to install air-conditioning was by sending Mum on an overseas holiday and putting it in whilst she was not around to veto the project.
We were not poor by any means. Mum and Dad were just frugal, having grown up in the Depression.
And no, I have never lived in a shoebox and had to lick road for a living.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 09 30 at 06:31 PM • permalink
“He routinely lectured his dad from the backseat of the minivan”
Get out and walk little Lukey…..
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 09 30 at 07:39 PM • permalink
#26 My kid’s school did a great job with a small industrial effort in her kindergarten class, and they accumulated about $500. They had to figure out what to do with the lolly. My suggestion was to give each kid their cut so they can learn what you get for hard work. $500/17=lesson learned.
You know they ended up giving that money to? The shelter for homeless men. Not the shelter for sympathetic homeless moms, kids and pets. The men’s shelter. That was painful.
Posted by Matt in Denver on 2007 09 30 at 08:16 PM • permalink
In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four one of Winston Smith’s neighbours ends up in Room 101 after his indoctrinated children dob him in.
Posted by Angela Bell on 2007 09 30 at 08:21 PM • permalink
I don’t understand these parents that let their children dictate the activity of the moment or make large economic decisions.
The way some people just cave in to their kids whining and bleating sickens me.
I’ve been calling Generation Y gen whine for a while now, but it looks like the offspring are much more advanced in that department.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 09 30 at 08:29 PM • permalink
Here’s a nice role model for the Gore Youth.
Seriously, children like these were why adoption was invented.
Posted by Mr Hackenbacker on 2007 10 01 at 12:57 AM • permalink
Very sad that adults abuse their position of trust with children in this manner. Fancy scaring the bejesus out of them with 100 metre ocean rises. Are these people sick?
I can’t wait for my daughter to come home from kindy with this claptrap. Is there a support group for this?
me senses paco industries opportunity, but without the ability to acronym it!
I know what you mean Kae, but it’s too late for them. You have to save yourselves.
Posted by Mr Hackenbacker on 2007 10 01 at 01:56 AM • permalink
My 9 yr old arrived home from school the other day with the announcement that one of his friends is worried about global warming and says the United States will be two thirds covered in water. Of course I just burst out laughing. My son had this momentary look of shock that I would laugh at his friends fears but then he just cracked up too. That was it, no need for discussion, the whole thing is just absurd when you give it a moment of rational thought.
Posted by alien kiwi on 2007 10 01 at 03:28 AM • permalink
The whole validation of what comes out of the mouths of babes…when our eldest was starting kinda, a very progressive kind mind you, at the information day before he started the teacher there gushed to us that “We try to design the curriculum around what children are naturally interested in” and I said “What, genitalia and world domination?”
Posted by ooh honey honey on 2007 10 01 at 03:39 AM • permalink
Sorry to Godwin this thread but I immediately thought of the Hitler Youth and the Maoist school kids being encouraged to dob in their parents.
Posted by James Hamilton on 2007 10 01 at 04:28 AM • permalink
That’s a great and useful attitude for them to have Maree, and I share it.
I fail to see the threat of “global warming” if those who are in such a panic about it are “increasing the dangers through emissions to warn the rest of us about the dangers” and to convince us to change our lifestyles if they won’t change their own.
Funny. This attitude is dimly viewed by Believers as “not caring for the environment”.
“We try to design the curriculum around what children are naturally interested in” and I said “What, genitalia and world domination?”
Frankly, some of us are still interested in that after we grow up.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 10 01 at 08:51 AM • permalink
If these rich people want to play at camping out in their own homes and pretend they’re “saving the planet” that way then fine, whatever floats your boat, but leave me out of it.
Funny that you should mention that – there’s a mention in today’s NY Post about how former model Christie Brinkley was bragging at some party about how she saves energy by using candles, rather than turning on the lights. In her mansion.
I’m sure no one pointed out the various holes in her logic as she beamed over her wondrous sacrifice for Mother Gaia.
Posted by Percy Dovetonsils on 2007 10 01 at 02:04 PM • permalink
Fifteen grand worth of uneconomical expenditure seems like a reasonable price to pay to make your damn weiner kids shut the hell up.