'I matter!' - Kids against Climate Change.

Gore is a big fan of Noah. “Noah is commanded by God to take into his ark at least two of every living species in order to save them from the Flood.” It was “a commandment that might appear in modern form as: Thou shalt preserve biodiversity. Indeed, does God’s instruction have new relevance for those who share Noah’s faith in this time of another worldwide catastrophe, this time one of our own creation?” 

Hansen has been - and remains – another key influence on Loorz, introducing him at the Bioneers Conference on October 15, 2010. “I met him when he was a kid,” he confided. “He’s still a kid. He’s a high school student, but he now towers over me. He’s an example of what we need. We need to get the young people to understand what’s happening and get them to put some pressure on the older people to give them a fair shake.”

Dr Hansen, Alec replied, was one of the people he “admired most in the world. He’s a scientist who’s become an activist, a movement leader and a hero for my generation. Yes!”                                                                                                                    

Yet there is something unsettling – and disturbing - about the targeting of vulnerable young (and not so young) minds; about Alec’s “inherent sense of calling”; and how this mission electrified his Bioneer audience. Was this the birth of a new religion, political party, or a combination of both? One thing seemed clear: they were going to try and give Hansen’s “older people a fair shake”.

Perhaps it was the time of day or that galah across the road, but Bob Fosse’s 1972 film, Caberet, suddenly came to mind. Could Alec have been channelling one of the young patriots in the beer garden scene?  They also believed tomorrow belonged to them; that it was up to them to change the mindset of every person – if not on the planet, then in the country - for that was “what we were born to do”.

Dr R K Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for almost a decade, also sees kids as“major agents of change”. For him - and his UN colleagues - kids have a “crucial mission”. They must be “mobilized” to join the climate crusade.

This is no surprise. Remember the opening film of the UNFCC’s 2009 COP-15 Copenhagen Climate Conference? An anxious young girl clutching a white (polar) teddy bear is plunged into a world of extreme weather and climate catastrophe. At the climax, she asks us to “please help the world”.

Background voices warn of “hundreds of millions of climate refugees” and chastise those who “still doubt the human influence on this predicted catastrophe.” The 4 minute 14 second film ends with what an analytical psychologist might describe as an infantile fantasy: “We have the power to save the world - Now.”

Donna Laframboise, author of The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert, asked two questions on her blog last week: “Does it really need to be said that science and activism are two very different things? Is there something I’m missing here – something that makes it OK for the head of a scientific body to be a full-blown activist?”

Reports by Dr Pachauri’s IPCC (the delinquent teenager) are being used by governments to justify carbon (dioxide) taxes and increased energy costs. They are why many UN countries seek to settle alleged developed world “climate debt” by annual transfer of at least one hundred billion dollars from it to the developing world. They are the sacred texts of those who insist anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are “dangerous pollution”. Yet Laframboise’s book demonstrates aspects of the Panel’s work (and processes) are flawed and not the outcome of an impartial compilation of evidence. 

The tomorrow-belongs-to-me (us, them) school of climate alarmism – and the IPCC - clearly need a few shakes too.