The Dalai Lama right, meets Bindi Irwin, daughter of the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, at Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Australia, Wednesday, June 13, 2007.
Posted on 07/09/2007 5:14:42 PM PDT by Graybeard58
They've learned about global warming from animated penguins and woolly mammoths. Are cartoons and toys turning them into stewards of the environment?
Forget "Mommy, where do babies come from?"
These days, kids can explain how penguins kiss and make mini-penguins.
Or how the polar ice caps are melting.
Or how your SUV guzzles too much gas, Mom!
Saving the world is chic with the PB&J set. And for every environmental morsel taught in school, there's a TV show or movie with an elementary take on the natural world.
The characters are snuggly animals or audacious kids. They're happy-go-lucky -- even if global warming melts the ice, they can still hang 10 on a wave.
It's enviromania. And it's coming soon to a kid near you.
Grownups drive Toyota Priuses and watch Al Gore documentaries. Sheryl Crow tells us to wipe with one square. "Green" is the hottest buzz word since Brangelina.
No doubt, it's cool to care.
But is it weird when your kid scolds you for leaving on the lights?
Take Diego Santana, 6. He tells his mom not to litter.
"I'll say, 'where did you learn this?' " said Tanya Santana, a 41-year-old St. Petersburg crossing guard. "There's just something going on. Why does my son know about global warming?"
Kids are learning more in school. Science scores among fourth-graders have risen since 1996.
The entertainment industry is along for the ride.
Ice Age: The Meltdown is one big global warming metaphor. The animals scamper to get off the ice before their home melts.
In Over the Hedge, suburban development drives sad-eyed animals - possums, squirrels, hedgehogs, a tortoise - out of their natural habitat.
On television, there are even pint-sized animal ambassadors.
Bindi Irwin, 8, is the Crocodile Hunter's offspring and star of Bindi the Jungle Girl on Discovery Kids.
In June, she read from a global warming children's book outside the U.N. headquarters. A polar bear ice sculpture melted behind her in the sun.
"We really do have to save our oceans, " she told a bunch of students.
It's grooming for adulthood, said Alma Mintu-Wimsatt, a marketing professor at Texas A&M University and co-author of Environmental Marketing: Strategies, Practice, Theories and Research.
The flip side - kids have money to blow on junk.
"A conservation message is simply another form of product placement," she said.
Products are everywhere - Happy Meal toys. Baskin-Robbins smoothies. Build-A-Bear dolls. T-shirts. Books. Nintendo Wii games.
The Children's Place sells a tiny shirt that reads "Traveling Green." There's a picture on it, too.
A hybrid car.
The Dalai Lama right, meets Bindi Irwin, daughter of the late "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, at Australia Zoo in Beerwah, Australia, Wednesday, June 13, 2007.
There’s more of this crap at the link if you can stand any more of it.
The hand that rocks the cradle...
There are very sound reasons why children aren’t in charge of anything. That goes for superannuated children as well.
No! It's indoctrination, pure and simple!
I disagree with you there. It seems superannuated children are in charge of everything.
The whole green movement is childish. They’re raping my wallet.
This is what you get if you let TV raise your kids nowadays. As a parent, I only let my kids watch DVD’s that I have personally screened. They do not have access to TV channels.
They had to replace God with another Religion.
This one kills everybody if you don’t listen
"We really do have to save our oceans, " she told a bunch of students.
I understand that we only have ten more years to save the oceans. At least that's what Ted Danson told me when I was in school in 1990.
You're young, you missed the global cooling fun in the '70s.
What? Littering is just slovenly and piggish, unless you're tossing something biodegradable out like a apple core. This is sort of a non-sequiter though. Littering to global warming. What do they have to do with each other? Is this woman just clueless as she doesn't know where her kid gets it?
The market for private schools needs to be exploited somehow.
Littering is certainly rude. It’s ugly and destroys property value.
But as far as not being biodegradable- neither is a rock, generally. As long as animals can’t choke on it or become tangled, there is no great harm caused by non-biodegrading trash.
Something a child shouldn't have to learn in school.
I suppose. I just dislike the unsightliness of it.
Is this some sort of fad pasta that is good for your colon?
Within reason and season, children should be taught to be good stewards of the earth. Genesis makes it clear we are to care for and cultivate our garden. Unfortunately, like most good gifts from God, Satan has taken this and perverted it for his own ends - thus we have the envirowackos.
While taking my daughter to her Tai Quan Do class this afternoon she noticed a oad sign and asked, "Mommy is it only illegal to litter where we live?" I explained to her that there are anti-littering laws everywhere, but some people just don't care. "They need to be enforced better" was her reply.
I totally agree with her and she didn't learn this in school or on television. Our property has 500 feet of road frontage on a rather busy road, and we have all gotten tired of picking up the trash that accumulates from the passing vehicles.
She looks just like her Daddy ... .
“Green” is a RELIGION. Facts don’t matter. They’re being brainwashed with scare tactics and their ignorance is being exploited and fed with junk science. Is it any wonder the U.S. is so low in Science and Math WORLDWIDE? Look at the crap they fill kids heads with.
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