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September 13, 2023 - 7:00am
My son’s class is studying climate change this term. At dinner the other night he announced with a certain relish that in 300 years’ time, both our house and the school would be submerged beneath the English Channel, as the oceans rise and the impressive-seeming sea defences visible from our front door are exposed as mere pitiful hubris. A terrifying prospect, but I’ll keep paying the mortgage all the same. Don’t meet trouble halfway and all that.
I will confess to a certain uneasiness with teaching climate change specifically to young children. I’m not a sceptic, but it’s such a sprawling, complex and politically contentious subject that I don’t think nine- and 10-year-olds are well-equipped to form opinions about it. They shouldn’t have to bear the heavy psychological weight of adult catastrophising. When I was that age my overwhelming preoccupation in life was what big Lego set I wanted for Christmas, and that’s healthy and right.
So I was not entirely unsympathetic to the Dutch policemen who have allegedly threatened to report parents to social services for taking their offspring on an Extinction Rebellion motorway protest. Quite apart from the safety angle, there is something profoundly distasteful in using children as human shields for a political campaign. It shows a kind of contempt for the normal, everyday business of politics, namely mature understanding of human action, persuasion, compromise, tolerance. Contrary to popular belief and the self-aggrandisement of youth culture, those are typically adult virtues.
What’s more, I can never quite escape the thought that it is extremely convenient for certain kinds of activist if large swathes of the younger generation are well-drilled in the catechism of climate collapse. It lends their political viewpoints and assertions a veneer of moral authority against which it is very difficult to launch a counter-attack without sounding like Mr Burns or the bad guys from an episode of The A-Team.
The appeal to youngsters is anti-political, and therefore anti-human, because it attempts to short-circuit rational discussion in favour of appeals to emotion. It takes advantage of the generally admirable desire, possessed by most normal adults, to not make children unhappy.
This is why so many people were so angered by the use of Greta Thunberg as the public face of global warming alarmism. Not because they bore her any personal ill-will, but because they suspected that there were other forces in play, cynically exploiting a troubled and dissatisfied teenager in order to portray the righteousness of their cause as beyond question. The camera has moved on from Thunberg now that she has reached her twenties, but in her heyday the press ran countless articles suggesting that anyone who expressed any reservation at all about her global calamity tour was a bully, a brute, a boor — or worse.
This is no way to conduct one of the most important and consequential political debates of our time. Childhood is a precious but fleeting time of wonder, curiosity and carefree enjoyment. Let’s not spoil that by making children props in our adult arguments. Leave them kids alone.
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SubscribeThere are, however, risks to the activists in using children. A friend of mine, when he was 14, was used as an appealingly innocent spokesman by some ecological activists at a public inquiry into a proposed nuclear power station. Unfortunately, the crafty power company then gave him a tour of one of their existing nuclear plants and he became a rabid pro-nuclear enthusiast. Give Greta time!
Exactly the same applies to the indoctrination of children about slavery, colonialism, BLM, gender, and sexuality.
Extinction Rebellion, and the people acting in its name, should be financially liable for the inconvenience and/or property damage they cause to other people.
Indeed as should all those people vandalising ULEZ cameras although some newspapers and even Tory MP’s seem to regard these people as heroes.
The people “vandalizing” ULEZ cameras are REDUCING inconvenience to other people.
In your opinion and only for a small minority of people driving in London. It is still criminal activity and should be treated as such.
The question will be what happens when these people get caught. Do you think they get the same treatment as XR protestors – a slap on the wrist and carry on tomorrow.
The teaching profession has changed so much since I was at school (i.e., back in the day when the anti-obesity campaign consisted of Mr Quelch caning Bunter for purloining comestibles.) I don’t recall anyone taking teachers’ opinions seriously.
Have kids changed? It was refreshing hearing the recording, recently, of the teacher telling kids that they must accept that a classmate is a cat since that is how he/she/they/it self-identifies. The kids did a great job at trying to talk some sense into the teacher, but she was too far gone to be salvaged.
But taking kids on demos and incorporating ecogloom in the curriculum are not as bad as parents subjecting kids to genital mutilation in the name of a religion.
Delighted to report things have got better. When I was in school I was told we would be underwater by 2020
Back in the day they said that NYC would be flooded by 2012. Twice a day, from the Battery all the way up to CBGB’s. Really cool graphics on TV.
Just empty promises.
I have very clear recollections of my parents’ Time and Newsweek magazines with cover stories blaring the coming ice age. The End Is Nigh is a sure-fire money maker.
“This is no way to conduct one of the most important and consequential political debates of our time.”
This made me chuckle. Like all religions, no debate is allowed. You can cite all the facts and figures you like, it falls on deaf ears with alarmists. That’s why any debate is crushed.
It is not coincidence that the Lord’s Resistance Army used kidnapped children to commit the worst atrocities.
All woke scum should leave kids alone.
Delighted to report things have got better. I was told in school we’d be underwater by 202
Blimey, you are old!!!
I am really old. During my childhood worldwide nuclear catastrophe was the alarm drumbeat. Of course I was aware of the concern (especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis) but my childhood happiness and concerns were not one whit affected by this societal preoccupation. And of course, nuclear catastrophe did not occur.
There is nothing new under the sun. In the 1980s, when I was a child, I was terrified of the neutron bomb and had many nightmares about it. There were mass protests against nuclear weapons, with many children in attendance.
There are 40 comments and only 13 remain. WTF. Do the censors get paid for each comment deleted? The thugs are working overtime today.
That’s not how I feel about it, and I despise ER and self-righteous climate activists, and am contrarian about all ‘popular’ movements. But I’m all for showing kids how democracy works, and getting them to participate. Later they can choose what concerns they want to take action on. But take action they should, because we shouldn’t leave any of it to experts and politicians. One vote every couple of years for a “representative” who doesn’t represent anything but their own interests and concerns, is not enough democracy for me.
my son’s old primary school in Notting Hill let parents take kids out of school so they could go on one of Greta’s marches a few years ago, I was outraged but not surprised in view of the wokey school leadership.
We are PAST the “Tipping Point,” and our children and grandchildren will have to live with the certain reality of catastrophic global climate change. (I say “our children and grandchildren” because it is questionable whether many generations after that will have a planet fit for habitation.)
The least we can do–having failed to stop the fossil fuel industry and capitalism in general in their destruction of the global environment–is to tell our children the truth about the future they will face.
The author says, “there is something profoundly distasteful in using children as human shields for a political campaign,” as though this was just another campaign to get Mr. X elected to the city council or Mrs. Y to Congress.
It is not. This movement goes beyond politics. It is no longer even about the survival of the human race. It is about the length of time and the conditions under which it will take for our species (and possibly most if not ALL species) to cease to exist on this planet.
Like so many other voices that pretend to know something about this issue, Niall Gooch fails to put himself in our children’s shoes. They are not being USED as pawns, they are expressing their own fears for THEIR future, not his.
From the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement in the fifties, parents brought their children to protests. I think it was only right that they should have done that. For a child who might live to see his father strung up by the Klan, or his mother raped by her employer–a part of so many black women’s experience–protest and demonstration were beyond “political,” they were existential. The same obtains here with catastrophic global climate change, which will discriminate against no one.
Yeah yeah yeah. Like all the kids dragged along to political demonstrations in Northern Ireland in the 70s and went on to blow their neighbours to bits or murder them in the most sadistic and often psychosexual manner. Keep kids out of the political debate. You’re too far gone. A zealot.
Is this all you got? Histrionics and emotion? After 35 years of hysterical claims, why have we not seen some evidence of dangerous climate change?
*the world is 5% greener than it was 20 years ago, a land area twice the size of continental US.
*hurricanes and cyclones are no more frequent today than they were 20 years ago
*forest fires have decreased slightly
*food production has increased steadily and consistently
*80% of coral islands in the pacific have grown larger
*the Great Barrier Reef is healthier than it has ever been since records started in the ‘60s
Do you ever wonder why a hurricane that hits Haiti causes thousands of deaths, and why the same size hurricane kills virtually no one when it hits Florida?
This type of emotional blackmail, not based on data and observation, will do more damage to children than climate change.
Typical sceptic dogma. Now back to the real world.
We’ve been over this countless times. Tell me what exactly is incorrect about any of these statements. These are all easily verifiable facts that you and alarmists simply refuse to accept.
My info about greening planet and forest fires comes from NASA, hurricane info comes from NOAA, coral islands growing comes from multiple measurements comparing aerial photographs starting in WWII, ag data is easily verifiable, the GBR info comes from AIMS.
These are all alarmist organizations, but even they can’t deny facts and observations.
Observations have context, for example coral recovery programs, fertiliser use, and narrow hurricane measurements.
I started writing a response with more facts to counter this strawman, but what’s the point? You will never be swayed by facts. Not worth the effort.
A true deep acolyte of the climate change religion.
Yet is is the next generations that will have to pick up the pieces of such a malaise presented by the author, who has not grasped the seriousness of the issue. The youth need to be involved, after all, the brilliant Greta has almost single handedly turned the heads of governments and leaders with her crusade.
With what result? More public money funneled to wind farms etc is typically what “tackling climate change” amounts to.
Where are the new flood defences and air cooling systems that survival in a boiling world will require? It’s almost like they don’t really believe their own rhetoric.
Not to mention the nuclear power investment which the stupid eco-munters are STILL opposing.
While the private-jetters build massive houses with huge “carbon footprints” on prime ocean-front real estate.
She said the planet would be uninhabitable by now; the seas having boiled off. People like you accept every word; using children to flatter your own ego.
No, she didn’t. Stop being silly.
“On June 21, 2018, Greta Thunberg tweeted that “climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” Five years have come and almost gone, and the tweet has been suspiciously deleted.”
Yes she did.
“The youth need to be involved”. No, they don’t. They simply aren’t equipped to deal with huge political issues. There’s a reason no-one gets the vote until they’re 18. Or are you suggesting that kids are capable of voting too?
If you think “the brilliant Greta” is not the pawn of all sorts of manipulative adults (including her parents), using her for their own agendas, then I’m a banana.
She is quite possibly the most popular and respected person on the planet. Not bad really is it?
Do you want some whipped cream?
The Doom Goblin!
Scottish teen-agers get the vote in Holyrood elections when they’re 16. A desperate SNP ploy to increase their vote it seems.
However they’re not allowed to use a tanning salon until they’re 18.
Too immature to decide on their own exposure to UV risk, but old enough to decide what government the rest of us get foisted on us.
It’s not all that serious. The planet isn’t a living thing. it’s a piece of rock floating in space. One day it’s time will come to an end and it will most likely be subsumed by the sun as it expands into a red giant. It will be here long after we become extinct. I don’t understand this irrational fear that the climate will destroy it. It’s like those people who used to walk around proclaiming that the end is nigh.
Oh I think James Lovelock would have argued that one. If you don’t understand these concepts then I really do recommend picking up one of his books, they are brilliant.
This one. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vanishing-Face-Gaia-Final-Warning/dp/0141039256
You do know that Lovelock has walked back his alarmist claims about climate change.
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.”
Every time Lovelock is mentioned this crap gets wheeled out.
What am I missing here? Lovelock explicitly walks backs his alarmism in the very book you cite, and somehow this is crap.
The quote was from an interview and taken out of context.
I didn’t say lovelock suddenly dropped concerns about the climate. However, there’s no way to claim the quote is taken out of context. It’s very explicit. He simply walked back his certainly about the rate of change.
In subsequent interviews, he advocated for nuclear and even fracking and described the environmental movement as morphing into religion.
From the Guardian; “It’s become a religion, and religions don’t worry too much about facts.”
Quite right; it IS a CULT, impervious to its own contradictions.
Simply ludicrous.
Your comment can be interpreted pro or con; it’s hard to decide. After bemoaning the fate of “the next generations”, you bring up the “brilliant Greta”, whose holier-than-thou gaze classify her as an autistic twit who could have participated in the Children’s Crusade of 1212, only to be sold into slavery.
Same old same old from RK – empty slogans. That or scary models using RCP 8.5 as a starting point, a scenario the IPCC says is too extreme, but never speaks up when it used over and over again, even in its own reports.
Another deep acolyte of the climate change religion.