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UN Summit: Transforming Your Kids into "Climate Change Agents"
The New American ^
| 06 December 2012
| William F. Jasper
Posted on 12/06/2012 5:13:44 PM PST by VitacoreVision
UNICEF, UNESCO, and other UN agencies and NGOs have teamed up to flood classrooms with an ongoing tsunami of global-warming indoctrination.
UN Summit: Transforming Your Kids into "Climate Change Agents"
The New American
06 December 2012
Do your children (or grandchildren) have nightmares about the Earth melting or exploding due to human-caused global warming? Do they believe they have no future because our planet is dying, the icecaps and glaciers are melting, the sea levels are rising, islands and coastal areas are disappearing, polar bears and children are drowning, plant and animal species are rapidly going extinct, and extreme weather will soon make human life unbearable, if not impossible?
Frightening, not Enlightening
Fear of an impending Climate Apocalypse apparently afflicts millions of children and adolescents worldwide, according to news stories in the mainstream media over the past few years (see here, here, here, and here).
Psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and parents report that many children are depressed and fearful, have difficulty sleeping, and believe it is pointless to study or plan a career, since there is little hope for a livable future. As a result, many are experiencing serious psychological and physical health issues. This should not surprise anyone, considering that hundreds of millions of students have been captive audiences for Al Gore’s “documentary,” An Inconvenient Truth, (with many of them being subjected to multiple classroom showings) and other similar fare. After being continuously marinated in climate-change K-12 indoctrination in almost every subject area, it is little wonder that many kids suffer from depression and anxiety.
Classroom Child Abuse for a “Higher Cause”
However, many children turn their global-warming angst into activism, becoming little climate warriors who will work tirelessly to convert their peers, their parents, and local and national political leaders into supporters of “sustainable development.” And this, clearly, is what the proponents of “climate change education” intend. Climate change education, they say, must be “transformative” and turn young children and adolescents into “climate change agents.”
That is the message being delivered by officials of UNICEF, UNESCO, and other UN agencies and NGOs at the UN Climate Conference currently underway (November 26-December 7) in Doha, Qatar. Stephanie Hodge, education program specialist for UNICEF, was interviewed at Doha by Climate Change TV, a UN-funded television network dedicated exclusively to propaganda about the global warming and the supposed solutions to this “crisis” that can only be attained through UN-directed global action.
According to Hodge, our current climate change education is “antiquated” and in dire need of renovation. We should be asking, she said, “What is global citizenship? What are some of the global values that need to be imparted through local content?” Climate change education, says UNICEF’s Hodge, is “really about a process of change, about starting transformation through education.”
To help bring about this change and transformation, UNICEF, with help from its sister agency, UNESCO, has come up with a new curriculum guide, entitled, Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction in the Education Sector: Resource Manual, which Hodge held up for viewers to see.
The UNICEF Resource Manual opens with this paragraph, which is sure to intensify any climatic stress already being felt by students:
“I am the present and the future. A victim of climate change, I live in a region that is constantly affected by disasters. Hurricanes and floods are my reality.” — Walter, a 12-year-old boy from Belize
Of course, “Walter, a 12-year-old boy from Belize,” is almost certainly a fabrication of the curriculum developers at UNICEF. Or at least the words attributed to him have been crafted by adults. How many 12-year-old boys do you know who speak like that? Or 16-year-olds, for that matter? But in UN materials even 6-year-olds and illiterate aborigines speak profoundly and poignantly in perfect poetic cadence.
In an article entitled, “Forcing Global Warming Nightmares on Children,” Tom DeWeese, the publisher/editor of The DeWeese Report and president of the American Policy Center, reproduced an impassioned letter he received from an elementary school girl who was upset with him for not accepting the global-warming “consensus.” The letter dutifully regurgitated the UN/Al Gore talking points. It is unlikely that it was composed by the girl who sent it. However, even if she did actually cut-and-paste the text herself without the prompting and assistance of her teacher and/or “facilitator,” it is obvious that she did not arrive at her state of mental agitation by calmly and maturely evaluating a balanced menu of data and perspectives in the heated climate “debate.” She, as with millions of her peers, has been force-fed a steady diet of climate-change hysteria disguised as scientific fact.
The UNICEF Resource Manual makes frequent and reverential reference to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the authoritative scientific source on all things related to climate, notwithstanding the fact that the IPCC has suffered repeated scandals and has been exposed as a thoroughly politicized tool that has slaughtered science in the service of a politically-driven agenda.
Parroting the IPCC, the Manual declares:
Climate change will generally increase disaster risks — not only through the increased frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events and sea-level rise. As water becomes scarcer, agriculture is strained, ecosystems are degraded, and societies will become more vulnerable to hazards.
“Climate Change Agents”
A major (or the major) purpose of the Resource Manual, we are told on page 11, is “to help children become agents of change.” The term “agents of change” is used five times in the Manual. In addition, it twice refers to “adolescents as climate change agents,” and describes “the role of youth themselves as change agents in sustainable development.”
The glossary of the Manual provides this UN-approved definition of sustainable development: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Therein, of course, lies the rub. UN officials and bureaucrats will determine what “meets the needs of the present” and what level of consumption constitutes “compromising the ability of future generations.” And they have already stated, in numerous pronouncements and publications, that U.S. consumption and lifestyles — energy, automobiles, single-family homes, food, travel, etc. — are unsustainable. The even more extravagant lifestyles of the officials and their NGO choir that attend these profligate UN moveable feasts — such as the current Doha conference— however, are considered “sustainable.” Naturally.
The Manual declares:
Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction seek to manage uncertainty, reduce vulnerabilities and build resilience for communities at risk (see annex 1.1). Adaptation, by definition, will need to be derived from local solutions. The process can be similar across the education sector, but the outcomes must be specific, emphasizing an inclusive, bottom-up approach. Adaptation and risk reduction fall within the overall framework of sustainable development and should be viewed holistically through that lens. [Emphasis in original.]
Larded with all of the usual catchphrases and banal bromides, the UNICEF publication continues:
In order to meet the rights of children and achieve sustainable development, we need systems led by young people and adults who think and act sustainably. We need these systems to permeate all levels of policy and planning, not just the national level. For quality education to be transformative, we need to see changes embedded in district, village and school development plans.
“The scaling up and mainstreaming of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction needs to be ensured throughout the education sector,” the Manual states. This will be done, it says, through:
• Sector planning and budgets
• Policies and legislation
• Governance and school leadership
• Learning and teaching processes
• Infrastructure and facilities
• Teacher capacity strengthening and pedagogical training.
That’s fairly all-inclusive, no? However, if the good folks at UNICEF have left anything out we can rest assured that it is covered elsewhere in the resource manuals and other materials produced by UNESCO, which we will be examining momentarily.
But, back to the UNICEF Resource Manual, which tells us:
The ultimate goal of the resource manual is to ensure that all children may equitably exercise their educational and environmental rights in totality, as described in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). This goal includes increasing the number of children who are reached by the education sector and cultivating the knowledge, skills, values and ways of thinking that contribute to more sustainable and equitable development.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child referred to above is, of course, the same controversial treaty that American parents and the U.S. Senate have been opposing for decades, pointing out that accepting the principles enshrined therein will negate parental rights and ratify the collectivization of our children as property of the global state.
There is an interesting, self-indicting paragraph in the Manual, which if accepted in any sensible reading of the text, would prohibit the very programs the Manual proposes. It states:
In a protective framework, acknowledging that since children’s capacities are still evolving, they have rights to protection on the part of both parents and the State from exposure to activities likely to cause them harm. This framework imposes obligations on States parties to protect these rights. [Emphasis in original.]
Very clearly, climate change indoctrination of the type being advocated by UNICEF is already doing immense harm to children. The articles we have linked to above quote a number of psychologists, psychotherapists, and counselors who attest to the unhealthy mental trauma children are experiencing as a result of global-warming propaganda overload. A much larger collection of sources, from studies and news reports worldwide can be accessed at Climate Lessons blogspot.
As the Manual states, children “have rights to protection on the part of both parents and the State from exposure to activities likely to cause them harm.” Unless those words are emptied of all sensible meaning and twisted into something completely fraudulent, they acknowledge that children must be protected from the very activities that the Manual advocates, since said activities not only are “likely to cause them harm,” but, manifestly, already are causing great harm.
The global-warming indoctrination frenzy of the past several years not only has caused psychological harm, but it has also negatively impacted academic achievement simply by robbing students of class time and study time that should be going to real science, as well as math, reading, history, etc.
A major study last year, "Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?" by Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance, added to the stack of reports that have been piling up for decades documenting the abysmal state of American education.
All this considered, climate change education is causing serious harm, and by the UNICEF Manual’s own words, children have a right to be protected from such abuse. But don’t expect the UN, UNICEF, or any of the other climate activists at Doha to extract any sensible meaning from the text; they are already emptying and twisting in order to fit the text around the preordained agenda.
UNICEF isn’t alone in this endeavor; as mentioned earlier, UNESCO is a senior partner on the project. And UNESCO, as the UN lead agency, oversees a vast program, which includes the Climate Change Education Clearinghouse (CCE).
The CCE is comprised of many UN agencies, including:
UN Climate Change Gateway
UNDESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs)
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme)
UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe)
UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme
UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)?UN-HABITAT (The United Nations Human Settlements Programme)
UNHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights)
UNHCR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees)
UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund)
UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research)
WHO (World Health Organization)
WMO (World Meteorological Organization)
Among the U.S. agencies participating in the UNESCO’s Climate Change Education Clearinghouse (CCE) are:
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Climate Literacy Network
National Oceanic and Atmopsheric Administration (NOAA)
National Science Foundation
United States Global Change Research Program
US Department of Energy/ARM Climate Research Facility
US Geological Survey (USGS)
One of UNESCO’s latest efforts is the newly released video, "Learning to Address Climate Change," a snappy, professional production which shows in four minutes “why climate change education is important to shape sustainable development and how it works in practice.” UNESCO is also zeroing in on high-school students and the high-school curriculum with YouthXchange-Climate Change and Lifestyles Guidebook.
In addition, it has also published The Climate Change Starter’s Guidebook. “The aim of this guide,” says UNESCO, “is to serve as a starting point for mainstreaming climate change education into curricula lesson plans and programs.”
Moreover, the Guide informs us:
The impacts of global warming are already apparent today in melting glaciers, increased frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, cyclones or heavy rainfalls, sea level rise, and changes in plant growth affecting agriculture and food production. These and other observed changes are expected to intensify and inflict a significant impact on human societies and the environment around the world especially if no drastic efforts are undertaken to reduce the emissions of GHGs into the atmosphere. [Emphasis added.]
Yes, UNESCO, UNICEF and the other would-be saviors of the earth demand “drastic efforts” that inevitably involve the individual yielding his natural, God-given rights to self-government, while national governments yield their sovereignty and dissolve into a UN-run global government. Of course, the UN and its agencies have been able to propagate this long-running child-abuse scandal thanks to the massive funding they receive each year from the U.S. Congress and the executive branch agencies under the direction of the White House.
Related articles:
Beware UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child
CFR Pushes End to Sovereignty at UN's Doha Climate Summit
Climate Facts Ignored Amid Hysteria at UN Summit in Doha
UN Seeking Global Carbon Regime at Climate Summit in Doha
UNICEF Wants Your Children
UNESCO's Rotten Track Record
The Global School Board
TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: althani; carbontrading; cce; ccx; climatechange; climategate; doha; globalwarming; qatar; un; unesco; unitednations
To: VitacoreVision
This is how the left plays the long game through indoctrination of youth.
You saw the payoff at the last election.
2
posted on
12/06/2012 5:26:07 PM PST
by
headstamp 2
(What would Scooby do?)
To: VitacoreVision
I thank God for all the dinosaur history taught to American kids, so many of whom go through a dinosaur phase as kids. God bless Michael Crichton for Jurassic Park, and may we be blessed with another dinosaur-mania phase.
I have a reasonably informed hunch that here on the ground and in the trenches, places where the MSM talking heads don't go, Gore and the Green Weenie Brigade are rejected by any smart kids who are natural leaders, especially when the "green values" junk is pushed by an earnest, stupid establishment -- kids have a wonderful way of seeing right through that kind of crap. A person posted here awhile back that (behind the teacher's back) the boys in her neighborhood called Gore "Sponge Bob Squarepants."
Math is a powerful thing, and in the unknown depths of kids' intelligence is the realization that in the geological scale of time, 10,000 years or even 800,000 years, is pretty much nothing. Down deep, where it's still more instinct than conscious thought, they know Gore is full of crap because dinosaurs "ruled the planet" for 150 million years, and were nearly wiped out at least once during that time before the last extinction 65 million years ago.
On that timeline, if the earth's temperature suddenly dropped or rose to where it was, say, 500 years ago when there was snow along much of the California coast, and held for 100,000 years, it might make man's life pretty tough, but it would also would represent a wholly insignicant blink on the earth's scale of reality. Only an idiot would think man could identify, let alone control, "significant" global climate change working in periods of time so infinitesimally brief, and 10,000 years is the equivalent of one beat of a gnat's wings to a man's life.
It's math. Smart kids who remember their dinosaur history get it. Maybe not consciously, maybe not in so many words, but enough to know for certain sure that Gore and the Green Weenies are asses.
3
posted on
12/06/2012 5:55:32 PM PST
by
Finny
(Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
To: VitacoreVision; 11B40; A Balrog of Morgoth; A message; ACelt; Aeronaut; AFPhys; AlexW; alrea; ...
4
posted on
12/06/2012 7:16:16 PM PST
by
Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(Obama should change his campaign slogan to "Yes, we am!" Sounds as stupid as his administration is.)
To: VitacoreVision; 11B40; A Balrog of Morgoth; A message; ACelt; Aeronaut; AFPhys; AlexW; alrea; ...
5
posted on
12/06/2012 7:17:11 PM PST
by
Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(Obama should change his campaign slogan to "Yes, we am!" Sounds as stupid as his administration is.)
To: VitacoreVision
I taught my kids to be climate change agents.
We started by building a couple of big honking fire pits for our patio.
Then we moved on to restoring a '20s IHC hit and miss engine.
With any luck, next year we'll be working on rebuilding a 1946 Ranger airplane engine.
Changing the climate, one carbon atom at a time.......
6
posted on
12/06/2012 7:35:00 PM PST
by
Notary Sojac
(Only liberals believe that people can be made virtuous via legislative enactment.)
To: Finny
Only an idiot would think man could identify, let alone control, "significant" global climate change working in periods of time so infinitesimally brief, and 10,000 years is the equivalent of one beat of a gnat's wings to a man's life.You articulated my thoughts quite well. Thanks for the post.
7
posted on
12/06/2012 8:07:12 PM PST
by
Inyo-Mono
(My greatest fear is that when I'm gone my wife will sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them)
To: VitacoreVision; 2Jedismom; 6amgelsmama; AAABEST; aberaussie; AccountantMom; Aggie Mama; agrace; ...
ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL
This ping list is for the “other” articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
It'd be really nice if public schools got back to teaching. Then there might be some justification for trying to save them.
8
posted on
12/07/2012 5:53:21 AM PST
by
metmom
(For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)
To: VitacoreVision; 2Jedismom; 6amgelsmama; AAABEST; aberaussie; AccountantMom; Aggie Mama; agrace; ...
ANOTHER REASON TO HOMESCHOOL
This ping list is for the “other” articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
It'd be really nice if public schools got back to teaching. Then there might be some justification for trying to save them.
9
posted on
12/07/2012 5:54:20 AM PST
by
metmom
(For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)
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