Children, forward to the Glorious Green Future!

Spiked ^ | August 12, 2008 | Lee Jones

[smokingfrog]

‘Imagine if every child in the country channelled their Pester Power in service of the Glorious Green Future.’

So says James Russell in his recent book How to Turn Your Parents Green. And he’s far from alone in his musings. npower, a large British electriciy supplier, have also been evisaging a world in which kids, renamed Climate Cops, are instructed to ferret out ‘climate crimes’ in their homes, schools and cities and report them to the authorities, that is, in Russell’s words, to ‘nag, pester, bug, torment and punish the people who are merrily wrecking [their] world’, fining ‘transgressors’ for non-compliance with green orthodoxy.

This is no idle dream. Greens seem determined to convert the nation’s children into environmentalist versions of Mao’s Red Guards, the blindly-revolutionary youths who spearheaded China’s disastrous Cultural Revolution.

In his book, Russell tries to stir up hatred against ‘Groans’ (grown-ups) and their wasteful ways, and encourages children to become ‘Guardians of the Glorious Green Future’, nagging until their parents sign a ‘Glorious Green Charter’.

This Charter affirms parents’ desire to avoid kids being ‘subjected to the perils of a new Ice Age’ or being ‘forced to evolve into aquatic organisms in order to contend with rising sea levels’, and concedes that their ‘brilliant children understand way more about this so-called Global Warming nonsense than I do’, empowering them to patrol the house looking for climate crimes and to levy fines for non-compliance with the rules laid down in the book. Kids are also instructed on how to seize their school councils to create ‘Eco Teams’ and lobby local government as green citizens (1).

[Jersey Republican Biker Chick]

HA HA HA HA HA....

[Little Ray]

If my daughters tried this sort of thing, I wouldn’t turn “green” but I might turn their behinds red...

[SShultz460]

Sig Material there

[dfwright]

He said he bought a gas/electric HVAC, and he apparently has done his homework on the monetary savings associated with doing so.

Unless I missed it, he didn't seem concerned over environmental impact, just his pocket book. Perhaps he's not a fool after all?

[Uncle Miltie]

Dude:

HVAC = Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning.

I promise not to drive my furnace anywhere.

:-)

[Uncle Miltie]

I don’t much care about “pollution” per se. I’m an economist (see nom de post). The cash flow analysis just plain works.

The builder of my house put in a horrible Natural Gas system. He also didn’t seal the vents well. So, I can get a better hybrid Gas / Electric system, seal my vents, etc. and get a good payback.

Here in the Pacific NorthWest, we have cheap electricity and expensive Natural Gas. With a hybrid system, I can heat with cheap electricity through a heat pump when that is more efficient based on outside temperatures and cost / KWH, and through a gas furnace when that is more efficient. A chip in the system will decide to switch between fuel sources depending on the relative cost.

Compared to my crappy system, I can cut my HVAC costs about in half. As pointed out in my original post, the economics pencil: It is a better investment (at 18% “ROI”) than my other opportunities (stocks).

I’ll take deals like that all day long.

[Uncle Miltie]

"Besides, CO2 is not a pollutant, and does not cause global warming. If gas is too expensive, burn wood."

Wood Soot is a pollutant. Here in Southern Oregon, the California wildfires prove that daily!

;-)

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

nag, pester, bug, torment and punish the people who are merrily wrecking [their] world’,

Unless the kid likes eating cold oatmeal (sans milk, salt and sugar) for breakfast, lunch and dinner, sleeping on the bare living room floor, reading the Bible for recreation and only having one set of clothes I would not advise this.

Not to mention LOTs of chores.

[Slings and Arrows]

I like your notions of parenthood.