In a recent Scott Rasmussen/HarrisX national survey, 51% of young voters (those under 35 years old) believe life on Earth will end in the next 10 to 15 years. Why would they think this?
Because a group of environmental extremists have force-fed the world’s youth a diet of apocalyptic rhetoric, so much so that they now believe life on this planet will end between 2029 and 2034. Not only is this narrative false, it is dangerous.
There is a delicate balance we must apply when we approach discordant conversations like climate change. Unfortunately, debates such as climate change have been polluted with exaggerated claims used to exploit or discredit legitimate issues and solutions. Extremists from both sides of the scale are what the media focuses on, and climate change centrists are ignored, or labeled climate change deniers because they do not surrender to apocalyptic rhetoric so callously bandied about.
This is no longer (if it was ever) a conversation about climate change, but now a political movement. Enviro-apocalypticism is the order of the day, and their intent is to scare ordinary people into jumping on the bandwagon, while intimidating climate change centrists to remain silent.
This is one reason why I haven’t publicly discussed climate change in my column, until now.
Our youth, like all generations before, and all generations that will follow, are not really leading, they are following extremists trying to harness our youth’s concerns about the environment and move them to an extreme, far-left agenda. One only needs to look at the “Youth Climate Strike Platform” to know I am right (www.youthclimatestrikes.org/platform). This is not a platform but an ill-informed manifesto that is nothing more than a socialist shopping list.
Although there are many earnest people that are part of the enviro-alarmist movement, there is an insidious component to the groups that have alternative motives than to just “save” the planet. By using catastrophizing alarmist language, which has only served to lead a large percentage of today’s youth into believing they have no future, they have created a generation of sheep. All the extreme enviro-alarmists have really achieved is to create a cause tailor-made for the regressive, extreme far-left. Groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSO).
DSO believes climate change is the issue they can hide behind to promote their agenda, and stated so in their Winter 2019 publication:
“Climate change will create an opening for socialist politics by breaking the link between capitalist growth and political legitimacy.” “We can harness mass anger to mobilize the public to oppose specific benefits for capitalists.” “By redirecting government money from capitalists to the mass of workers we can offer an antidote to the effects of the past forty years of neoliberalism.” (from the article titled How Climate Change Will Affect Socialist Strategy).
As stated, they have found their “mass” in groups such as the Youth Climate Strike.
The Youth Climate Strike manifesto has very little to do with climate change and does nothing but regurgitate U.S. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. A deal her own Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti, as reported by the Washington Post, stated “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how do you change the entire economy thing.”
The Youth Climate Strike manifesto and AOC’s Green New Deal include removing the apparently entrenched racial, regional ability and gender-based barriers to income and wealth. Demands include the creation of a public bank and requiring the elimination of community-level threats through equitably distributed investments to historically disadvantaged communities (whatever that means). Both include the passage that demands respect for indigenous women, indigenous queer and trans women, women of color and queer and trans people of color. Climate change?
Neither the Green New Deal nor its carbon copy sister “Youth Climate Strike Platform” is really about climate change, but a massive government intervention, and what will essentially be a giant redistribution of wealth, both domestically and globally.
Enviro-apocalypticism is a globalist initiative where the individual’s rights and needs are sacrificed for the good of the collective. And those that dare to speak up are attacked and/or censored.
By merely stating these facts and raising true concern regarding the manipulation of today’s youth, you will be attacked. Those who dare to express concern that the enviro-apocalypticism movement is harmful to our youth will be accused by those adults, hiding behind groups such as Youth Climate Strike, of child abuse.
What many people who are attracted to this cause fail to realize is that this is not about the environment, but about overhauling the economy, social justice and equality of outcome. By “Harness(ing) mass anger,” and blanketing themselves in Morality 101, groups like the Youth Climate Strike have been duped into believing there is no hope, and that is the true child abuse.
