Greening Our Schools and Nation

By Alan Caruba

If those of you who have doubts that the Earth is dramatically warming and that the planet is about to be plunged into the kind of heat that will likely destroy all life, then it must be puzzling that so many people continue to believe that “global warming” is happening when the planet is quite obviously into a decade-old cooling cycle that is likely to last for several more decades.

A large component of this belief is the indoctrination in the nation’s schools in which virtually every subject area has been given a “green” component and textbooks are filled with references to drowning polar bears, disappearing rain forests, rising sea levels, and the usual claptrap about “global warming.” No child could pass through such an avalanche of junk science without becoming convinced of its authenticity.

An example of this occurred when Michael Kundu, “a whale photographer” and school board president in Marysville, Washington, threw a fit after receiving The Skeptic’s Handbook by Australian science communicator, Joanne Nova.

The 16-page booklet is published by The Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank headquartered in Chicago. The booklet was sent to all 14,000 public school board presidents, accompanied by a letter from climate scientist, Bob Carter, a professor at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.

Kunda sent an email to other school board presidents encouraging them “to stuff that junk mail directly into the recycle basket.” I picked up my copy at a three-day climate change conference sponsored by Heartland in March of this year in New York City. The conference featured seminars led by national and internationally leading climate scientists, all of whom demonstrated that the “science” of “global warming” is balderdash.

The vitriol of the school board president reflects the desperation of “global warming” advocates such as Al Gore who keeps revising his End of the World predictions and is now demanding “global governance” to save the Earth. Considering that the hoax was generated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this is global governance we can do without.

The “Cap-and-Trade” bill, a huge tax on energy use that will drive up the rates that utilities charge all Americans, passed the House and is now in the Senate for consideration. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is on record saying that if the Senate doesn’t pass the bill there will be droughts, floods, fires, loss of species, damage to agriculture, worsening pollution and, one assumes, plagues of frogs and locusts.

Did I mention the desperation surrounding the “global warming” hoax? Yes, I did. The Greens have reason to be desperate because both “global warming” and the economy-killing legislation based on it is in big trouble in the U.S. and increasingly around the world. At the recent G-8 conference, both China and India made it clear they have no intention of destroying their economies in the name of something that is not happening.

You can and should ignore President Obama’s promises of millions of “green jobs” and “energy independence.” The jobs are a myth and, for decades, the U.S. government has made it impossible to access our own vast reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas, negating any hope of greater energy self-sufficiency.

The White House just announced its guidelines that will allow “renewable energy” companies, about 5,000 in all, to apply for some $3 billion in government funds—your money. Three billion dollars on wind and solar power that currently accounts for just over one percent of the electricity we use daily! Without subsidies, few of these companies would even exist. Even billionaire T. Boone Pickens has tossed in the towel over his plan to install hundreds of wind turbines.

Meanwhile, back in Heartland’s Chicago, a July 9 news report noted that “For the 12th time this meteorological summer (since June 1), daytime highs failed to reach 70 degrees Wednesday. Only one other year in the past century has hosted so many sub-70-degree days up to this point in a summer season—1969, when 14 such days occurred.” It’s getting colder in Chicago and I guarantee you that it is going to get colder there and everywhere else in the U.S.

It behooves the school board presidents and members around the nation to take a look at the “environmental” agenda being taught in their schools because it is mostly the same kind of lies being told by Al Gore, Sen. Boxer, along with Reps. Henry Waxman, and Edward Markey, the authors of Cap-and-Trade.

Kudos to The Heartland Institute for leading the effort to educate the public, our nation’s legislators, and those responsible for the education of our children in this national life-and-death struggle to demonstrate that real climate science totally rejects this hoax.