In a new propaganda talk presented in classrooms across America, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) boss Gina McCarthy (shown) urged school children to become part of the “climate solution,” take a government “pledge,” and even “bug” their families to jump on the Obama administration’s “green” bandwagon. If those students enjoy math and numbers, the top environmental bureaucrat said she wants them to go work for the EPA — so they can help calculate the “carbon footprint” of Americans. “We have lots of people working here that do that type of work,” McCarthy explained.
The bizarre EPA climate propaganda in the classroom meshes well with Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s repeated pledges to transform American school children into “green” and “global” citizens ready for “green jobs” in the new, “sustainable” world order. Critics of McCarthy’s antics, however, were not amused, with one equating the EPA intrusion to Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin’s tactics.
The man-made global-warming alarmism is extraordinarily controversial. Former NASA climatologist Roy Spencer famously referred to vicious climate alarmists as “global warming Nazis,” saying they threaten liberty and humanity. Other leading scientists in the field, such as MIT meteorology professor emeritus Richard Lindzen, have called climate alarmists a “cult” for refusing to adjust their faith despite the evidence. Even the United Nations’ top global-warming guru, forced out recently after being arrested for sex crimes, boasted that his mission was actually his “religion.” Just 40 percent of Americans, meanwhile, believe the man-made global-warming theory, according to a Pew poll released last year. And the evidence discrediting the theory keeps piling up by the day.
But none of that stopped the EPA from invading your child’s classroom to propagate the controversial climate faith without so much as parental consent. On October 27, in a national event that was ignored by the establishment press but highlighted by ClimateDepot.com, the EPA chief participated in a carefully orchestrated “live discussion” with school children all across America. It took place under the guise of having impressionable young Americans in government schools “celebrate National Energy Awareness Month” and “ENERGY STAR® Day,” as the EPA put it. And yes, those are real things.
Central to the bizarre event was encouraging children to sign the EPA’s “Energy Star Pledge” and hand over their contact information to the bureaucracy for future propaganda programming. But there were a lot of “green” messages for the children to take home with them — literally.
“There is so much you can do to become part of the climate solution,” McCarthy told children, without any hint of discussion on what the alleged climate “problem” in need of a “climate solution” might be. “I think the greatest part about the pledge for young people, and when old people take it cause we’ve had 4.3 million people take this pledge already, and we want you to take it too.”
The “host” of the propaganda program noted that that was a “big” number. “Well, that’s because we need everybody,” McCarthy responded. And by “everybody,” she really means everybody — including parents of the children subjected to the inappropriate propaganda during school hours.
Of course, the EPA’s “Energy Star” program children were supposed to pledge allegiance to has long been the subject of ridicule. When the Government Accountability Office (GAO) set out to investigate the scheme in recent years, the results were beyond shocking. First, the watchdog agency set up four bogus firms to form “Energy Star” partnerships with the federal government. All of the fake companies’ applications were approved by the EPA or the Department of Energy within two weeks. Then GAO submitted various fake products for “Energy Star” certification.
Among the “products” was one called Black Gold. Its description read: “Gas-powered clock radio is sleek, durable, easy on your electric bill, and surprisingly quiet.” The listed dimensions were similar to those of a small generator “for increased ease while traveling.” “The newly Energy Star-qualified product is safe for indoor use and easy on the environment,” it added. Another fake GAO product certified by Energy Star was the “energy-efficient” air cleaner, described as a “space heater with a feather duster and fly strips attached.”
But saving the “climate” from humans and their emissions of the gas of life (CO2, exhaled every time you take a breath) is about more than just purchasing Energy Star-certified gas-powered alarm clocks and space heaters with feather dusters and fly strips attached. In her pitch to school children, the EPA boss also outlined a broad array of actions for the little ones to take.
“It’s not just about light bulbs. It’s about appliances,” she said. “It’s about riding your bike instead of riding in a car. It’s about what kind of car you drive. Can you buy one that’s more efficient? Can you use renewable resources in that car, like ethanol [food turned into engine-ruining fuel with government subsidies even as people starve]? There’s lots of choices that you can make that actually lower that footprint, and you’ll never miss it.”
Then a student asked McCarthy what schools and homes could do. “At your school you can pull together a green team or environmental club,” McCarthy suggested. “We’ve seen it in lots of schools where people go around and check out their schools, see where there’s inefficiencies, make suggestions to the principal and to the school boards on how you can get more efficient. See if you can talk to your utility and get some solar panels on the school so you can teach kids about renewable energy and save yourself money.… I am so happy that classrooms all across the U.S. are, like, watching, ’cause it helps us get the message out. So, get those pledges in.”
But signing the Obama-EPA pledge and quietly reducing your own “carbon footprint,” or even the footprint of your schools and homes, is not nearly enough. Students must become zealous missionaries for the climate-alarmism movement as well, the EPA chief insisted. “Work with your schools. Work with your community,” she exhorted the children. “Bug your family at home to recycle and do all the great things.”
Of course, the Obama administration is not the first government to urge children to spread the government’s controversial views to their parents. But historically, such dramatic intrusions into family life and value systems by government agents have often ended in tragedy. Indeed, physicist John Droz with the Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions (AWED) blasted the targeting of children in this way as a throwback to an especially brutal dictatorship of the last century.
In an e-mail to The New American, Droz said he saw two issues here. He did not see anything wrong with some of the ideas presented by the EPA, such as riding bikes. “However, included with the sensible ones, are nefarious implications (e.g., that all fossil fuels are a bad thing),” he said. “This is a classic PR tactic, hide the real message in a collection of seemingly harmless suggestions.”
But it gets worse. “The fundamental problem with the entire EPA program is that it is based on politics, not Science,” continued Droz, who has long blasted what he calls the ongoing “corruption” of science. “Of course the EPA says otherwise, but the reality is that they either don’t understand what Science actually is, or they really do and are ignoring Scientific realities for the sake of promoting a political agenda. For example, there is no Scientific basis for the EPA to be promoting wind energy, as there never has been a genuine Scientific assessment concluding that wind energy is a Net Societal Benefit. Never. Anywhere.”
And the intrusion into school classrooms with the EPA’s anti-science message is not appropriate. “For the EPA to be foisting these two matters onto unsuspecting school children is a seriously disturbing tactic — commensurate with Lenin,” Droz conluded.
The students selected to visit EPA headquarters and ask questions, though, seemed fully on board with the agenda. One student in the discussion, for example, asked McCarthy about what types of careers kids could consider if they are interested in “protecting the environment through saving energy.”
“Well,” the EPA chief said, “there’s lots of choices.” First among them: “Come work at EPA. That would be really good, ’cause we’re great people here who love to do this kind of work,” she said. “You could come and do economic work. If you like numbers, we always have room for you cause how do you think we do all that accounting to see what your carbon footprint is? We have lots of people working here that do that type of work.”
To hear the EPA chief tell it, your carbon footprint represents your sin, and reducing your carbon footprint is your required penance, and even the salvation of the world. “Today’s students are tomorrow’s innovators, decision-makers, and problem-solvers,” McCarthy said in a press release about the event. “I’m thrilled to participate in an Energy Star Day event aimed at educating young people about the tools we have to act on climate, and inspiring them to design the solutions of the future.”
But of course, the EPA was not alone in beaming a top Obama bureaucrat’s propaganda into classrooms all over America. School administrators, too, played a role. “This virtual event is an exciting way to engage my students in the science of energy efficiency and the critical issue of climate change,” District “Science Director and STEM Educator” Dacia Jones with Durham, North Carolina, Public Schools said in a statement. “I look forward to utilizing this one-of-a-kind learning opportunity to help my students gain a deeper understanding of how they can preserve a healthy planet for future generations and help protect the climate by saving energy.”
Also participating were mega-corporations and crony capitalists. Among them is an outfit known as “Discovery Education,” which boasts on its website about helping schools implement the Obama-backed Common Core scheme and “support this critical transformation.” Of course, one of Common Core’s key operatives, Obama education chief Duncan, who bribed states to surrender final control of education to Washington, D.C., touted the broader agenda in a speech on sustainability. “We must advance the sustainability movement through education,” he explained, calling education a “weapon” to “change the world” while boasting about his partnership with UNESCO and the administration’s increasing usurpation of power over education.
Another player participating in the EPA’s event was DIRECTV, owned by AT&T. Both companies recently ranked among the ten worst companies in America on the Faith Equality Index. But Charlene Lake, AT&T Services senior vice president of “Corporate Social Responsibility” and “Chief Sustainability Officer,” celebrated the firm’s role in proselytizing the environmentalist dogma to captive children. “It is important that we not only prepare students academically, but also empower them to be good stewards of our planet,” Lake said.
Government schools should not be a place for the Obama administration to preach its radical views to American children without parental consent. But, as the latest EPA scheme illustrates, that is exactly what they have become. Congress must take action. If it is true that the EPA has “lots of people” working to calculate the “carbon footprint” of Americans, the admission should be heeded by U.S. lawmakers as a good tip on where they might start with cutting down the massive deficit and saving embattled taxpayers some money. The propaganda budget for the agency, created by an executive order signed by President Richard Nixon, would be another easy place to start. More broadly, any agency or program not authorized by the U.S. Constitution should be cut as quickly as possible.
Controversial propaganda and encouraging kids to “bug” their parents about it should have no place in America’s school classrooms. And if the administration itself is incapable of understanding that, the American people’s elected representatives must take action to protect education and children from the White House and its agenda.
Photo: AP Images
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.
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