(NB – new Special Bonus Thoughts were added to this post the morning after it was written. Scroll down.)
This will end in tears, says Bishop Hill.
Your trouble, bish, is that you are too nice. I think it’s going to be hilarious. Tough on the kiddies, maybe, but having to stand next to daddy while he does the embarrassing thing will make a man of a munchkin faster than you can say “no pressure”:
Time to Fight Back: How We Can Take on Those Who Are Sabotaging Our Response to the Climate Crisis
My partners in this effort will include the group Kids vs Global Warming, whose iMatter march aims to put a million kids in the streets on Mother’s Day to demand that our leaders address climate change as if our children’s future matters; Grist, America’s leading environmental news website; The Nation; and other organizations still to be determined.
On the ground in Washington I will be joined by local young people—activist members of Generation Hot. Our plan is to confront the climate cranks face to face, on camera, and call them to account for the dangers they have set in motion.
…
Our initiative, Confront the Climate Cranks, will do just that: confront the cranks on camera and accompanied by some of the children they have put in danger. We will video all of our confrontations and then quickly make them available to the public—by posting them on YouTube and sharing them with mainstream and alternative media and the social networks of our partner organizations.
…
And by conveying our message through children and parents, we can reach the ordinary Americans whose support is essential to overcoming the power of money and insider status in Washington. We hope you’ll join us.
ADDED LATER: I had some more serious thoughts overnight. Here they are. The way it is meant to work, Mark Hertsgaard’s strategy, is this: the Concerned Green Parent can attack all the more fiercely because of the presence of the kid as symbol of threatened innocence, while for the Evil Denier the presence of the child means that he or she must be very restrained in hitting back, for fear of (a) hurting the poor kid’s feelings by saying what you actually think of his daddy, and (b) being filmed doing so. Metaphorically this strategy is like firing your missiles from a school. Metaphorically, I said; it is only words – but, like firing your missiles from a school, it is an unconscious compliment to your enemies: it demonstrates your trust in them to behave well even when you do not.
In practice, however, the Hertsgaard strategy will backfire. It will backfire so painfully and so predictably that I doubt it will happen more than once, if at all. For one thing, audiences react badly to blatant emotional blackmail. If the world were just, that backblast would hit only the parent who is willing to use his or her own offspring as a combined shield and stage prop and then put the results on the internet, but the world is not just. Go onto YouTube and find some innocuous clip of a sweet little boy or girl playing the violin or something. Even then, when the subject is utterly uncontroversial, among all the nice comments saying “awww, cute” you will still find a few mean ones. How much meaner they will be when the subject is highly controversial. Not a pleasant thing for the kid to find when googling his or her own name ten years later.
That is why the ethical course is to pour scorn on this idea before it is put into practice, so it never is. We – and by “we” I mean all those who oppose green fanaticism, including anti-fanatics who do believe in climate change – do lose a potential propaganda victory thereby. Price you pay for being the good guys. At least we can enjoy directing an invigorating burst of ridicule at Mr Hertsgaard now.
ONE LAST THOUGHT AND THEN I REALLY WILL GET ME COAT: I was thinking of little kids in the two paragraphs above. The case is slightly different for older children, the clear-eyed, firm-jawed young activists of “Kids vs Global Warming” and its “partnering organizations” as mentioned in Mr Hertsgaard’s article, given that they are of an age to know what game they are participating in if they come along to one of these doorstepping sessions, and usually to know damn well that the people they waylay will hesitate to verbally strike back with full force. One does have to hold back a little for the sake of their tender young pysches – but a measured dose of ridicule for them, alongside their parents, will do them good in the end.
I presume the kids will wear br…sorry, green shirts?
Now I’m tempted to fly to Washington just to get confronted by these people. Though knowing them they won’t post any videos of encounters in which they are made to look bad.
Can I also be confronted, virtually, online, or do I have to be an American and physically there to meet this fellow?
Are the children also going to be informed that acceding to the warmist’s demands will necessarily entail the destruction of our economy, and condemn them to lives of penury and deprivation?
The message they’re teaching children is that it’s OK to bully people to get what you want.
I’d rather they sexually fondle children: you can only molest one kid at a time, and if there’s no penetration, there’s no physical pain to recover from. A child can recover more quickly from being fondled than he can from being bequeathed a world where certain forms of bullying are considered a virtue.
You just have to explain to the kids that climate change means there will never be snow in north america, ever again! Then, if you can persuade those under the snow that climate change really is on the way (cross our hearts!), they’ll be all in favour of it!
> The message they’re teaching children is that it’s OK to bully people to get what you want.
Yes, but just think of the magnificent responses that type of behaviour is likely to generate.
The “Climate Cranks” know about Democracy too, and they may be tempted to take the opportunity to “Vote like an Egyptian”.
Dale Amon, i have a bone to pick with you! how come I had to read it in a newspaper- that NASA is already experimenting with a small solar sail!? just a few square meters across, and in low Earth orbit, but a solar sail, pressured by light alone, is currently in orbit!
To relate to the topic, you could explain to the kiddies that we’ll soon be able to move to colder planets, thanks to solar sails, though not immediately.
Ted Schuerzinger, that was…um, er…what’s the word…strange? Oh, well, never mind…
I think “thought-provoking” would be better, Alisa. 😉
How about a rather cleaner re-statement of the idea? People who claim to be doing things for the children are usually doing things to the children instead.
I agree with Ted 😉
On the article’s subject, all this is looking pretty desperate. Maybe I’m too much the optimist, but it feels somewhat like AGW’s moment has passed by.
I think to a considerable extent, fads are associated with particular generations and moments in time; they peak, then lose momentum to be replaced by the Next Thing. This can be quite a rapid thing. Compare everyday politics in 1970 to 1980, for instance. AGW feels like it’s yesterday’s news.
Ted: it did provoke some thought alright – although maybe not of the kind intended:-/
As much as I would like to (I do mean it), I don’t see how the two things are connected? Or maybe I do, but in reverse: people who are doing things to the children are likely to be hiding behind doing things for them – is that what you had in mind? That would make sense to me.
Will the magic cool-aid be laid on for the kids as well?
The warmanistas are sick, bunker dwelling, window licking, circle jerking weirdos.
Aww all us Deniers have to do is tell the little shavers that their XBoxes, Facebook and Youtube won’t work anymore when the Warmists shut down Civilisation in order to save it, and watch their little faces light up with joy!
What happens if too many children show up at at the rally?
Cheers
I think you are at least partly wrong RAB. At least some of them, especially the intelligent and the passionate ones, would give up all these cool stuff for a Higher Purpose – provided it is presented to them in the “right” way. Does the abomination in Natalie’s link qualify is a different question – I’m sure most of us here will live long enough to find out.
This whole thing is stupid.
If people could do Physics, this wouldn’t even be getting discussed.
Unfortunately, the Pan Narrans self-proclaimed ‘intellectuals’ don’t want to admit that they can’t, so they try to bluster, bluff, and bully.
“How dare you question my intellectualism?”
Epic fail.
” A child can recover more quickly from being fondled than he can from being bequeathed a world where certain forms of bullying are considered a virtue.”
I understood this perfectly, and agree. Also, what Dishman said, except it (‘it’ being the AGW hypothesis) would be getting discussed, but by meteorologists in academic papers, not puritan partisan kiddie manipulators.
Just to be contrary, why should we think about the kids? As someone once said somewhere, somewhen- “Why should we care about Posterity? After all, what has Posterity ever done for us?”
Agree with IanB and Ted. It is a sign they are desperate, and worried.
Excellent.
Just announcing that I have added quite a lot of extra stuff at the bottom of the post. I was thinking overnight that bringing your children along to your political face-to-face confrontations really was not that funny after all.
Also announcing the imminent removal of the commercial spam comment someone just made.
Since pretty much all the CAGW zealots are also ‘man bad nature good’ OPT eugenicists, I’d just tell the little shavers to enjoy life while the can before Daddy and Mummy put them down them as they’re too big a drag on poor Gaia’s resources.
It would depend on what they meant by ‘children’, Natalie. Don’t forget that these days a person younger than 18 (and in some circumstances even older) are considered and are being referred to as children.
Alisa, not for the first time, you and I were thinking alike. I’ve just added another bit about older children to the post. (Last addition, I promise.)
And yes, funny, how the age of adulthood shifts wildly depending on the political point they want to make. I’m sure I’ve heard the same commentators advocate that sixteen year olds be given the vote (because they think they would mostly vote for left wing parties) and also call people well into their twenties “children” when trying to stir up outrage about gun violence and so on.
Alisa:
That’s part of the argument. The other part is that the people who are open about doing things to the children are less harmful than the people doing it hiding behind the mantra of doing it for the children. As my original comment says, the person doing it to the children can only do it to one child at a time.
The people, however, who are giving our children the example that the way to get what you want is to bully others; demonize them; and not deal with their logical comments, but rather say that if you don’t have the One Approved Set of Thoughts you can’t care about the children; are giving the children a terrible world in which to become adults. And such people need to be called out on it.
Absolutely. It’s just that for the life of me I can’t see how you leaped from there to fondling – but looks like it’s just me, so I won’t belabor the point any longer.
Natalie, additional, er, additions are always welcome, as far as I’m concerned. That’s the beauty of a blog: unlike the dead-tree media, it’s alive:-)
Alisa:
I simply picked a more radical example of something that can be done to the children.
I actually think the fondling analogy works for me.
I’ll tell you why. Do you recall the Brass Eye episode “Peadogeddon”. OK Chris Morris along with his “son” confronts a peadophile and then is vaguely outraged that said peadophile just doesn’t fancy his kid. I guess it happens in much the same way I don’t fancy most women.
In some obscure sense this all reminds me of that.
There was a time when we used to pity Pavel Morozov and his like.
We should have regard to Luke 17:2 as well.
Whose children are going to be exploited and turned into props – their own? If so, why did they have children if they claim to care so much about the planet?
Politicians and advocates have *always* done this just not in such a direct fashion, both in producing said endangered child and standing in front of someone with a different opinion.
I noted that ‘kids’ and ‘young people’ are used interchangeably. Mark Hertsgaard defines Generation Hot as people born after 23rd June 1988. A date that lives on in climate infamy – James Hansen’s pantomime presentation to the US Senate.
Is that a girl band?
I wish some members of Generation Hot would show up ay my house today . . . . .
. . . . . with shovels.
Kids used make spending money by shovelling snow. Not anymore, it seems. I couldn’t plow out the end of our private road today for all the parked, idling cars containing the precious pearls of our yoot, waiting for the school bus – apparently, the glaring heat of -6°F is too much for them to bear.
Let them come and doorstep me – I look forward to it.
llater,
llamas
It bloody well ought to be Sam…
So hot they can’t wear many clothes at all.
Frankly though I shouldn’t give the buggers ideas.
A sort of Eco- Spice Girls. “This is ‘Biodiversity Spice’, this is ‘Rainforest Spice’…”
Why am I now picturing George Monbiot trying to be Simon Cowell…
There’s another factor. Most Greens are incapable of a two way conversion. These events will be an adult shouting at the “target” with a child in the background.
That’s not going to have the desired effect of creating shame or demonstrating guilt
As with other violent failing cults, when you can see the game is up it’s time to put the kids on the front line. Saying that, I myself can’t help relishing the thought of bumping into this mob, I’m always happy to discuss the science with earnest young people. It could even end up a bit like when the children of Okinawa found that whatever their parents said, the American soldiers weren’t going to eat them.
Now, who could possibly argue with the opinion of the children?
Thanks, Edward. I love that song.
Unfortunately, the use of children is no indication that the ‘game is up’. The Iranians used their kids as suicide mine detectors in the Iran-Iraq war, and that particular game is still very much in play.
When the watermelons start handing out ‘magic keys’, we know we’ve got a real problem.
“you could explain to the kiddies that we’ll soon be able to move to colder planets”
How about we tell the eco-nazis that the ship is ready and waiting: The Golgafrincham Space Ark B. 😀
Then…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5_0iZQ-TuA&feature=fvw
Heh he heh!
Knew it!!!
😉
:-=)
pst314,
Do you want to die for the lack of a telephone sanitizer?
From the link:
So in other words, as the climate changes, this climate change will unleash still more climate change.
Does anyone here get the feeling he’s concerned about climate change?
“…tell the little shavers that their XBoxes, Facebook and Youtube won’t work anymore when the Warmists shut down Civilisation in order to save it, and watch their little faces light up with joy!” by RAB at February 3, 2011 01:03 AM
I skimmed the “Time to Fight Back…” article then went over to the “GenerationHot” Facebook page and read way too much. Had all I could do to keep from making some sort of comment alluding to the above by RAB. Seemed like much of it was venting hate at ‘Corporations’, old folks, personal-transportation, etc. Talk about the “cranks” not “getting it” how is it they don’t “get” that all they have, all that allows them to unite-and-protest is all because of everything-they-claim-to-despise???
I wonder if the author-dude will be biking or taking the train to D.C. for the event?
Genghis Khan the eco-warrior If you’re like me and thinking the worst, then yes, it’s what you think.
You really aught to pop in at CCIZ now and again dear lady. I did a post on that yonks ago. 😉
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=8976#comments
Mea culpa RAB:-)
Very common leftist tactic here in the States. They call the kids walking billboards.
Anti leftists tend to be more couched in better public behavior so the presence of kids does work rather well in silencing counter argument