The Greens thrive on alarmist scenarios, hoping to terrorise people – even children – into giving up basic freedoms in the interests of supposedly saving planet earth. They have been doing this for decades now. Indeed, these Chicken Little activists have perfected the art of fear mongering.
Today it is hyped-up alarmism over global warming. How quickly we forget however that a major campaign to convince us that global cooling was underway took place just a few short decades ago. Then there were nuclear winter panic campaigns, world starvation scenarios, and so on.
There are always scary gloom and doom scenarios being played out by Green activists who want to terrorise us into their agenda – an agenda which is usually about global governance (as Australian Greens’ leader Bob Brown reminded us of again just last week) and the diminution of human freedoms, if not humans themselves.
I have written before about how many of these radical Green leaders want to cull humans, radically shut down economic growth, and turn the West into a stone-age civilization. Others have documented such social engineering gloom and doomism.
Herbert London penned a volume back in 1984 entitled, Why Are They Lying To Our Children? In it he looked at how the classroom has become a battleground, as our children are being intimidated and threatened with a lot of Green agitprop.
He began his book this way: “War, famine, environmental disasters, material shortages, and a declining quality of life – that’s what schoolchildren are being taught to expect in their futures. What these grim and mostly inaccurate forecasts are doing to their lives I don’t know for sure. But I do know this: Our children are absorbing excessively negative misinformation.”
It is not just all the gloom and doom that is harming our kids. It is what they are not being told which is also so worrying: “for example, that the wealthy nations play a constructive role in furthering world economics; that rapid economic growth has changed many non-Western nations from poor to middle-income status; that most resources are more accessible and less costly today than ever before; and that new forms of energy have been created. All these forms of progress are likely to proceed even more effectively in the future.”
In the more than 25 years since London penned those words, things have only gotten worse in terms of Green alarmism. They are just as anti-free market, anti-growth, anti-business, and anti-freedom as ever, and they will latch onto any new scare-mongering to push their agendas.
They really are anti-growth Luddites who want to take us back to a standard of living that most of us have long ago gratefully escaped from. And the developing nations, who want to catch up to the prosperous and free West, are also going to suffer from the Green panic-merchants.
But it is our children I especially fear for. Just as London reported on how our kids were being deliberately targeted back then, it is just the same today, if not worse. Consider this headline from today’s press: “Primary school children are being terrified by lessons claiming climate change will bring ‘death, injury and destruction’ to the world unless they take action.”
The article begins this way: “On the eve of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s carbon tax package announcement, psychologists and scientists said the lessons were alarmist, created unneeded anxiety among school children and endangered their mental health. Climate change as a ‘Doomsday scenario’ is being taught in classrooms across Australia.
“Resource material produced by the Gillard government for primary school teachers and students states climate change will cause ‘devastating disasters’. ‘As well as their terrible impact on people, animals and ecosystems they cause billions of dollars worth of damage to homes and other buildings,’ the material says. Australian National University’s Centre for the Public Awareness of Science director Dr Sue Stocklmayer said climate change had been portrayed as ‘Doomsday scenarios with no way out’.
“Dr Stocklmayer said she was not a climate-change sceptic but worried that ‘too much time was spent presenting scary scenarios, especially to young people. (Children) feel incredibly despondent and helpless in the face of all this negative information,’ she said. ‘To put all of this before our children … is one of the most appalling things we can do to (them). The public is suffering from enormous fatigue on negative information … rather than say polar bears are going to die, we have to look locally at addressing solutions.’
“Child psychologist Kimberley O’Brien also said the language of climate change should be ‘toned down’. ‘Kids are naturally interested in cyclones and volcanoes but (educators) should stick to the facts,’ she said. ‘They should be aware that kids do have nightmares’.”
Yes presenting our children with the facts, and all sides of these debates, is what our education system should be doing. But instead it is seeking to terrorise little Johnny and Sally into uncritically embracing the alarmist agendas of the radical Greens.
Education should not be about indoctrination and Green alarmist propaganda. No wonder so many concerned parents are pulling their kids out of the public school system. Our children should not be bullied and bludgeoned into accepting Green activism and alarmism.
They should be free to learn in an open and non-threatening environment. If not, then the mass exodus from public education is only likely to continue. And perhaps the sooner the better.
I have said this elsewhere. What is happening to our country? Why can’t they just teach instead of indoctrination? I always thought this sort of thing only happened in Fascist and Communist countries. I know this has been happening for years and it is shocking all this is going on in a supposed free democracy. It reminds me of the opening lines of that old Pink Floyd song ‘Another Brick in the Wall pt 2-
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
It sounds like it is beginning to become a statement of fact.
Carl Strehlow
Bill, three cheers for the homeschoolers. They have been disenchanted for decades with the limited number of choices they have regarding the education of their children.
Stan Fishley
And who could forget the green economic vandals at the UN. Here’s a piece on their newest report;
Former US secretary to the United Nations John Bolton once famously said: “The [UN] Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” (H/T Milo)
But I’d say Bolton was being too modest in his aspirations. Far too modest. I’d suggest that if we lost all 38 stories the benefits to mankind would be almost incalculable. Right now, indeed, it’s likely that the United Nations poses a far greater threat to Western Civilisation and the world’s economic future than Al Qaeda does. Have a glance at its latest report World Economic And Social Survey 2011 – and you’ll see what I mean.
The report argues that over the next 40 years our governments must spend an annual minimum of $1.9 trillion – that’s an eyewatering $76 trillion – steering the global economy onto the path of “green growth.”
Bill, we have had this before in Australia. In the 1960s, Russian ‘set theory’ was taught in primary school arithmetic due to the Sputnik Scare. The fad passed. With the emergence of Sociology in the flower-powery 1960s, History and Geography combined into ‘Social Studies’. Handwriting in Australia has suffered a steady decline since the 1960s. Any attempt to assist a child with correct relaxed posture for handwriting would result in censure for the teacher. Personal desktop computers were introduced to primary schools in the 1990s under the rubric of ‘progress’ and claims used decades earlier for the advent of TV were recycled: ‘revolution in education and communication’ etc. Ergonomic and other health concerns about PCs for children were ignored. So the latest Australian fad, teaching the Greenhouse Scare as mainstream science to impressionable children is just par for the course, really. But it will pass. To quote Australian Federal Schools Minister Peter Garrett’s old rock band, Midnight Oil:
“Cold, cold change…waiting to begin, left us all angry and bewildered, laughing at the way we were taken in”.
Oksanna Zoschenko
As a teenager I used to think the Pink Floyd song was terrible. Now as a homeschooling parent I find myself on the that side of the fence.
Aaron Downs
Oksanna I must say I don’t agree with you. It will not pass. Yes the type of indoctrination may change but schools being used to scare children into growing up believing propaganda will not change. The government has most children for 6 hours a weekday for 13 years. School is the perfect place for bringing about social reform whether it is teach
Kylie Anderson
I agree with you, the greens are anti business, but amazingly they still have or make a lot of money. Only yesterday we heard the announcement that 2 greens, and even the ABC called them that, bought a Gunns woodchip mill in Tasmania in order to close it down and make a “ecotourism centre” out of it.
I wonder how they make their money, for it is certainly not from natural resources or maybe it is, by hypocrisy or on the black market?
As for fads in schools, they may do pass, they certainly change shape and colour but thankfully more and more parents re aware nod the haemorrhage of children out of the public system continues, praise the Lord!
Many blessings
Ursula Bennett
Hi Bill,
I have said this elsewhere. What is happening to our country? Why can’t they just teach instead of indoctrination? I always thought this sort of thing only happened in Fascist and Communist countries. I know this has been happening for years and it is shocking all this is going on in a supposed free democracy. It reminds me of the opening lines of that old Pink Floyd song ‘Another Brick in the Wall pt 2-
We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
It sounds like it is beginning to become a statement of fact.
Carl Strehlow
Bill, three cheers for the homeschoolers. They have been disenchanted for decades with the limited number of choices they have regarding the education of their children.
Stan Fishley
And who could forget the green economic vandals at the UN. Here’s a piece on their newest report;
Former US secretary to the United Nations John Bolton once famously said: “The [UN] Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” (H/T Milo)
But I’d say Bolton was being too modest in his aspirations. Far too modest. I’d suggest that if we lost all 38 stories the benefits to mankind would be almost incalculable. Right now, indeed, it’s likely that the United Nations poses a far greater threat to Western Civilisation and the world’s economic future than Al Qaeda does. Have a glance at its latest report World Economic And Social Survey 2011 – and you’ll see what I mean.
The report argues that over the next 40 years our governments must spend an annual minimum of $1.9 trillion – that’s an eyewatering $76 trillion – steering the global economy onto the path of “green growth.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100095817/un-reveals-its-master-plan-for-destruction-of-global-economy/
Damien Spillane
Bill, we have had this before in Australia. In the 1960s, Russian ‘set theory’ was taught in primary school arithmetic due to the Sputnik Scare. The fad passed. With the emergence of Sociology in the flower-powery 1960s, History and Geography combined into ‘Social Studies’. Handwriting in Australia has suffered a steady decline since the 1960s. Any attempt to assist a child with correct relaxed posture for handwriting would result in censure for the teacher. Personal desktop computers were introduced to primary schools in the 1990s under the rubric of ‘progress’ and claims used decades earlier for the advent of TV were recycled: ‘revolution in education and communication’ etc. Ergonomic and other health concerns about PCs for children were ignored. So the latest Australian fad, teaching the Greenhouse Scare as mainstream science to impressionable children is just par for the course, really. But it will pass. To quote Australian Federal Schools Minister Peter Garrett’s old rock band, Midnight Oil:
“Cold, cold change…waiting to begin, left us all angry and bewildered, laughing at the way we were taken in”.
Oksanna Zoschenko
As a teenager I used to think the Pink Floyd song was terrible. Now as a homeschooling parent I find myself on the that side of the fence.
Aaron Downs
Oksanna I must say I don’t agree with you. It will not pass. Yes the type of indoctrination may change but schools being used to scare children into growing up believing propaganda will not change. The government has most children for 6 hours a weekday for 13 years. School is the perfect place for bringing about social reform whether it is teach
Kylie Anderson
I agree with you, the greens are anti business, but amazingly they still have or make a lot of money. Only yesterday we heard the announcement that 2 greens, and even the ABC called them that, bought a Gunns woodchip mill in Tasmania in order to close it down and make a “ecotourism centre” out of it.
I wonder how they make their money, for it is certainly not from natural resources or maybe it is, by hypocrisy or on the black market?
As for fads in schools, they may do pass, they certainly change shape and colour but thankfully more and more parents re aware nod the haemorrhage of children out of the public system continues, praise the Lord!
Many blessings
Ursula Bennett