“Learn hundreds of wide-ranging ideas, including how to talk about the climate crisis in age-appropriate ways; amplify the voices of youths demanding change; get kids off screens — and outdoors; change your lifestyle in ways that deepen bonds, improve moods, and reduce your impact on the Earth.”

“How Kids Can Stop Fearing the Future and Tackle Climate Change” by Michael Krasny fawningly describes a new propaganda book by Mary DeMocker, “The Parents Guide to Climate Revolution,” complete with a foreword by deep ecologist Bill McKibben.[1]

Subtitled “100 Ways to Build a Fossil-Free Future, Raise Empowered Kids, and Still Get a Good Night’s Sleep,” Parents Guide is self-advertised as follows:

“Relax,” writes author Mary DeMocker, “this isn’t another light bulb list. It’s not another overwhelming pile of parental ‘to dos’ designed to shrink your family’s carbon footprint through eco-superheroism.” Instead, DeMocker lays out a lively, empowering, and doable blueprint for engaging families in the urgent endeavor of climate revolution. In this book’s brief, action-packed chapters, you’ll learn hundreds of wide-ranging ideas for being part of the revolution — from embracing simplicity parenting, to freeing yourself from dead-end science debates, to teaching kids about the power of creative protest, to changing your lifestyle in ways that deepen family bonds, improve moods, and reduce your impact on the Earth. Engaging and creative, this vital resource is for everyone who wants to act effectively — and empower children to do the same.

Relax? “… freeing yourself from dead-end science debates”? Welcome to a religious crusade trying to normalize inconvenience and sacrifice–and institutionalize pessimism and gloom.

But Good News Abounds …

Why not let children learn about the benefits of carbon dioxide and the pluses of moderate warming, natural or anthropogenic? Why not, in the interest of deep uninterrupted sleep, discuss the benefits of dense, mineral energies versus their dilute, intermittent rivals?

Climate science is quite unsettled. In fact, high school debaters might well prefer to argue the affirmative rather than the negative given the sorry track record of Malthusian/overpopulation alarmism. [2]

The comprehensive CO2 Coalition website offers a multitude of positives on the science side; Alex Epstein’s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels (2nd ed. forthcoming) on the energy-reality side. The climate math is depressing; the CO2 Coalition and Epstein will joyously reverse the gloom with argument and fact.

Naomi Seibt to the Rescue?

And on the subject of children, a new voice, 19-year-old Naomi Seibt, can beat Greta at her own game. She has garnered attention in mainstream publications and within the vast Trumpland.

“I’ve got very good news for you,” Seibt begins.

The world is not ending because of climate change. In fact, 12 years from now we will still be around casually taking photos on our iPhone 18s. … We are currently being force-fed a very dystopian agenda of climate alarmism that tells us that we as humans are destroying the planet. And that the young people, especially, have no future – that the animals are dying, that we are ruining nature. I really believe that many [members of left-wing environmental groups] have good intentions, that they are genuinely scared of the world ending, and that they are scared that their parents and grandparents are ruining the planet. It’s breaking relationships. It’s breaking up families. And we at The Heartland Institute, we want to spread truth about the science behind climate realism, which is essentially the opposite of climate alarmism. Don’t let an agenda that is trying to depict you as an energy-sucking leech on the planet get into your brain and take away all of your passionate spirit. I don’t want you to panic. I want you to think.

Naomi’s views are an excellent antidote for DeMocker’s “The Parents Guide to Climate Revolution: 100 Ways to Build a Fossil-Free Future, Raise Empowered Kids, and Still Get a Good Night’s Sleep.”

Game on ….

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[1] Bill McKibben is an anti-modern-energy warrior. As he stated back in 2012,

Given this hard math, we need to view the fossil-fuel industry in a new light. It has become a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth. It is Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization. — McKibben, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.” Rolling Stone, July 19, 2012.

[2] The 2008/2009 high school national debate topic was “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase alternative energy incentives in the United States.” In 2013, the Bickel & Brewer/NYU International Public Policy Foundation chose the high-school debate topic: “Resolved: Adaptation should be the most urgent response to climate change.”

Both of these topics would allow for a Negative position arguing that the climate alarm was overstated. A better debate topic would be

“Resolved: Climate Change is an Existential Crisis for a Sustainable Future” just to allow students to develop a Negative case–and see that the issue is, indeed, debatable.