Climate Child Abuse? Using Children to Lobby for Action on Climate Change
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

With a mother who is an opera singer and a father who is an actor, it stands to reason that young Greta Thunberg would follow her parents’ footsteps into the performing arts. Greta (shown) — a 16-year-old who can pass for 12 — has become an international star for her role in the traveling production of Climate Strike, a show sponsored by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and assorted socialist non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide.

The Climate Strike, which was attended by an estimated four million people worldwide on September 20, will continue with thousands of performances scheduled in countries all over the world in the coming week.

Among the show’s organizers was climate hysteric NGO 350.org, which claimed in a press release Friday:

Today was the biggest distributed climate mobilization ever seen. Organizers estimate that over four million took to the streets today, kicking off a week of actions in which more than 5,800 events will take place in 163 countries in all corners of the globe. Over 7,370 websites shut down and around 3,000 companies closed their doors in support of the Global Climate Strikes.

And young Greta was the star of it all. She delivered her lines quite well for a young actress. In front of an estimated 250,000 in New York City’s Battery Park, Greta spoke about the dangers to the planet from global warming and her frustration at the inaction of today’s politicians.

“What is the point in educating ourselves and learning the facts when the people in power refuse to listen to the educated and pay attention to the facts?” Greta asked. “Where I come from (Sweden) things are very different from here, but when it comes to the climate and ecological emergency, and the people in power, it is pretty much the same. In fact, everywhere I’ve been, the situation is more or less the same.”

Greta’s stirring soliloquy continued: “The people in power, their beautiful words are the same, the empty promises are the same, the lies are the same, and the inaction is the same. Nowhere have I found anyone in power who dares to tell it like it is, because no matter where you are, even that burden they leave to us, us teenagers, us children.”

Later, on Twitter, Greta issued a threat to anyone who might not believe that climate change is the crisis that she insists it is. “Over 4 million on #ClimateStrike today. And counting…. If you belong to the small number of people who feel threatened by us, then we have some very bad news for you: This is just the beginning. Change is coming — like it or not.”

Greta’s performance, along with the climate brainwashing that the public schools and the media have been engaged in for decades now, affected many in the crowds around the globe — especially children, many of whom were given the day off from school to attend the event. New York City even gave its 1.1 million students permission to take the day off to attend climate strike events.

But Greta, and all those other children, are being used.

Unfortunately, many children aren’t seeing the whole climate change movement as the absurdist fiction that it is. Perhaps the saddest part of the climate change charade is that real children are truly afraid that their planet is in danger. They actually believe that the world is ending due to man’s “mishandling” of the climate.

One sign in the New York City crowd was especially telling. Fifteen-year-old Peri Micheva of Ward Melville High School in Suffolk County, New York, held up a sign, which read, “Why the f*** are we studying for a future that we don’t even have?”

Young Peri’s sign is symptomatic of the Malthusian theory, which is being propagated in public schools these days. Simply stated, the theory posits that human beings are the world’s main problem. As the human population continues to grow, food will become scarce, overcrowding will lead to wars and, of course, the environment will degrade. You can understand how those teachings could lead to some surly kids.

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When government schools teach climate hysteria to children, it’s somewhat true that they are creating children who are passionate, politically active, and ready to go out and shout for the governments of the world to “do something” about the theoretical menace of climate change. But for every politically active kid they produce, they are creating dozens who just don’t care. They’re creating a generation of nihilists who justify wasting their lives on video games on the assertion that their futures look dystopian at best.

Climate-change activists, politicians, and leftist government school systems have no qualms about using children as human shields in their attempt to use junk science and fear to overturn the current social and political order. Children, after all, are not responsible for what they are taught. But in denying children information on the other side of the climate change-argument (and, yes, there is another side to that argument), the government school systems around the world are guilty of a kind of child abuse — the denial of hope.

Photo of Greta Thunberg speaking at Climate Strike event in New York City, Sept. 20, 2019: AP Images