'Two small girls appeared in the kitchen. One of them looked vexed; the other looked worried.
"Can you please tell her that global warming isn't real?" asked the exasperated party.
Through my mind swept a series of possible responses. They ranged from the instinctive ("People are suffering from hysteria."), to the equivocal ("Many believe it's real and many do not."), to the blandly reassuring, ("Sweetheart, it's not something you need to worry about.").
"Why do you ask?" I punted.
"Someone told her that if she leaves a light on, a polar bear would die."
Blandness and equivocation disappeared.
"Nonsense," I told the child. "Grown-ups are investigating global warming and arguing about it. The one thing I can tell you is that you shouldn't be afraid to turn the lights on. It's not going to affect a polar bear either way." '
Source: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Leaving-the-lights-on-won_t-kill-a-polar-bear/article/12489
The article concludes (my emphasis added):
'Put aside the debate over climate science for a moment. These are adult matters, or at least they should be. It's iniquitous for grown-ups -- who themselves are roiled over the subject -- to transfer their anxieties to children who are too young to wrap their minds around the issues, let alone "save" the Earth.
It's unfair. Ultimately, it may also redound to the environmental movement's disadvantage. For just as children discover that there is no Santa Claus and no tooth fairy, they'll eventually stumble on the statistics indicating that the world hasn't warmed appreciably for a decade. In other words, today's 8-year-olds may grow up to discover that the guilt and fear perpetuated upon them in childhood were based mostly on vapor, on adult hysteria. We ought to protect them from that, at least.'
Amen to that. Oh for ten thousand times ten thousand of articles like this one to be published!
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