December 7, 2012
Do your children (or grandchildren) have nightmares about the Earth melting or exploding due to human-caused global warming? Do they believe they have no future because our planet is dying, the icecaps and glaciers are melting, the sea levels are rising, islands and coastal areas are disappearing, polar bears and children are drowning, plant and animal species are rapidly going extinct, and extreme weather will soon make human life unbearable, if not impossible?
Frightening, not Enlightening
Fear of an impending Climate Apocalypse apparently afflicts millions of children and adolescents worldwide, according to news stories in the mainstream media over the past few years (see here, here, here, and here).
Psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and parents report that many children are depressed and fearful, have difficulty sleeping, and believe it is pointless to study or plan a career, since there is little hope for a livable future. As a result, many are experiencing serious psychological and physical health issues. This should not surprise anyone, considering that hundreds of millions of students have been captive audiences for Al Gore’s “documentary,” An Inconvenient Truth, (with many of them being subjected to multiple classroom showings) and other similar fare. After being continuously marinated in climate-change K-12 indoctrination in almost every subject area, it is little wonder that many kids suffer from depression and anxiety.
Classroom Child Abuse for a “Higher Cause”
However, many children turn their global-warming angst into activism, becoming little climate warriors who will work tirelessly to convert their peers, their parents, and local and national political leaders into supporters of “sustainable development.” And this, clearly, is what the proponents of “climate change education” intend. Climate change education, they say, must be “transformative” and turn young children and adolescents into “climate change agents.”
That is the message being delivered by officials of UNICEF, UNESCO, and other UN agencies and NGOs at the UN Climate Conference currently underway (November 26-December 7) in Doha, Qatar. Stephanie Hodge, education program specialist for UNICEF, was interviewed at Doha by Climate Change TV, a UN-funded television network dedicated exclusively to propaganda about the global warming and the supposed solutions to this “crisis” that can only be attained through UN-directed global action.
According to Hodge, our current climate change education is “antiquated” and in dire need of renovation. We should be asking, she said, “What is global citizenship? What are some of the global values that need to be imparted through local content?” Climate change education, says UNICEF’s Hodge, is “really about a process of change, about starting transformation through education.”
To help bring about this change and transformation, UNICEF, with help from its sister agency, UNESCO, has come up with a new curriculum guide, entitled, Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction in the Education Sector: Resource Manual, which Hodge held up for viewers to see.
The UNICEF Resource Manual opens with this paragraph, which is sure to intensify any climatic stress already being felt by students:
“I am the present and the future. A victim of climate change, I live in a region that is constantly affected by disasters. Hurricanes and floods are my reality.” — Walter, a 12-year-old boy from Belize
Of course, “Walter, a 12-year-old boy from Belize,” is almost certainly a fabrication of the curriculum developers at UNICEF. Or at least the words attributed to him have been crafted by adults. How many 12-year-old boys do you know who speak like that? Or 16-year-olds, for that matter? But in UN materials even 6-year-olds and illiterate aborigines speak profoundly and poignantly in perfect poetic cadence.
In an article entitled, “Forcing Global Warming Nightmares on Children,” Tom DeWeese, the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and president of the American Policy Center, reproduced an impassioned letter he received from an elementary school girl who was upset with him for not accepting the global-warming “consensus.” The letter dutifully regurgitated the UN/Al Gore talking points. It is unlikely that it was composed by the girl who sent it. However, even if she did actually cut-and-paste the text herself without the prompting and assistance of her teacher and/or “facilitator,” it is obvious that she did not arrive at her state of mental agitation by calmly and maturely evaluating a balanced menu of data and perspectives in the heated climate “debate.” She, as with millions of her peers, has been force-fed a steady diet of climate-change hysteria disguised as scientific fact.
The UNICEF Resource Manual makes frequent and reverential reference to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the authoritative scientific source on all things related to climate, notwithstanding the fact that the IPCC has suffered repeated scandals and has been exposed as a thoroughly politicized tool that has slaughtered science in the service of a politically-driven agenda.
Parroting the IPCC, the Manual declares:
Climate change will generally increase disaster risks — not only through the increased frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events and sea-level rise. As water becomes scarcer, agriculture is strained, ecosystems are degraded, and societies will become more vulnerable to hazards.
“Climate Change Agents”
A major (or the major) purpose of the Resource Manual, we are told on page 11, is “to help children become agents of change.” The term “agents of change” is used five times in the Manual. In addition, it twice refers to “adolescents as climate change agents,” and describes “the role of youth themselves as change agents in sustainable development.”
The glossary of the Manual provides this UN-approved definition of sustainable development: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Therein, of course, lies the rub. UN officials and bureaucrats will determine what “meets the needs of the present” and what level of consumption constitutes “compromising the ability of future generations.” And they have already stated, in numerous pronouncements and publications, that U.S. consumption and lifestyles — energy, automobiles, single-family homes, food, travel, etc. — are unsustainable. The even more extravagant lifestyles of the officials and their NGO choir that attend these profligate UN moveable feasts — such as the current Doha conference— however, are considered “sustainable.” Naturally.
The Manual declares:
Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction seek to manage uncertainty, reduce vulnerabilities and build resilience for communities at risk (see annex 1.1). Adaptation, by definition, will need to be derived from local solutions. The process can be similar across the education sector, but the outcomes must be specific, emphasizing an inclusive, bottom-up approach. Adaptation and risk reduction fall within the overall framework of sustainable development and should be viewed holistically through that lens. [Emphasis in original.]
Larded with all of the usual catchphrases and banal bromides, the UNICEF publication continues:
In order to meet the rights of children and achieve sustainable development, we need systems led by young people and adults who think and act sustainably. We need these systems to permeate all levels of policy and planning, not just the national level. For quality education to be transformative, we need to see changes embedded in district, village and school development plans.
“The scaling up and mainstreaming of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction needs to be ensured throughout the education sector,” the Manual states. This will be done, it says, through:
• Sector planning and budgets
• Policies and legislation
• Governance and school leadership
• Learning and teaching processes
• Infrastructure and facilities
• Teacher capacity strengthening and pedagogical training.
That’s fairly all-inclusive, no? However, if the good folks at UNICEF have left anything out we can rest assured that it is covered elsewhere in the resource manuals and other materials produced by UNESCO, which we will be examining momentarily.
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