This is what your scare tactics do

12 November, 2009 by

Governments across the world realise that indoctrinating children and young people with climate change alarmism is a clever tactic. They are far less experienced in the ways of the world, less sceptical and suspicious, and they will believe much more of what they are told by figures in authority (teachers in particular). They will then take these messages home to their parents and the job is done.

However, scaring our children witless about climate change isn’t without serious consequences, as demonstrated by the following case, and there will no doubt be many more:

Fears about the environment have been linked to a growing number of mental health issues in young people, writes Mary Fallon.

Last year a 17-year-old boy in Melbourne became the world’s first person to be diagnosed with “climate change delusion”.

Dr Robert Salo at the Royal Children’s Hospital reported that his patient believed his water consumption would deplete water supplies, leading to the deaths of millions of people, and that he had internet research to prove this.

He had attempted to stop drinking and checked for leaking taps to prevent the catastrophe.

The boy had a major depressive disorder with delusions specifically relating to climate change.

Salo has also seen worries about climate change in a number of young people with anxiety disorders, including obsessive compulsive and generalised anxiety disorder.

“They feel anxious about their own contributions to climate change and usually have concerns related to water usage,” he says. (source)

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Environmentalism and fear

2 November, 2009 by

You will recall the disgraceful UK government ad, using a bedtime story to scare a little girl about the dangers of “climate change” (see here). Brendan O’Neill, writing in The Australian, analyses the motivation behind such actions:

Not surprisingly, the ad has caused a storm. Nearly 400 people have complained to Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority. Some are disturbed by the ad’s scientific illiteracy (how one gets from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s relatively sober reports about changing weather patterns to a cartoon dog drowning in a flooded city is anybody’s guess). Others have slammed the government for knowingly and deliberately – and with taxypayers’ money – scaring kids.

Yet the ad is only an extreme version of what has become mainstream environmentalist policy in recent years: terrifying children.

The environmentalist ethos, whether it is spouted by official bodies or radical, dreadlock-sporting campaigners, presents itself as caring and considerate, yet it is shot through with the politics of fear.

In place of grown-up, adult debate about the future, environmentalists continually use scaremongering – conjuring up horrid, squalid future scenarios based more on their fantastic imaginations than scientific fact – to try to force people to lower their horizons and change their behaviour.

And this green politics of fear is starting to have a detrimental effect on children.

As popular culture bombards kids with messages about a fiery, bunny-hostile future, and as many schools in Britain and elsewhere rebrand themselves as “eco schools”, devoted to reducing children’s carbon footprints as much as expanding their minds, so children are becoming paralysed by fear.

In 2007, a survey of 1150 seven to 11-year-olds in Britain found that more than half had lost sleep as a result of worrying about climate change.

“It’s making me and my friends go mad,” said a 12-year-old girl.

In the environmentalists’ desperation to get their message across, we are bringing up a generation of children scared out of their wits.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,