When your children are left with green fascists

IHT - Sometimes, Jennifer Ross feels she cannot make a move at home without inviting the scorn of her daughters, Grace, 10, and Eliza, 7. The car she drives? A flagrant polluter. The bath at night to help her relax? A wasteful indulgence. The reusable shopping bags she forgot, again? Tsk, tsk.

Ross's children are part of what experts say is a growing army of "eco-kids" - steeped in environmentalism at school, in houses of worship, through scouting and even via popular culture - who try to hold their parents accountable at home. Amid their pride in their children's zeal for all things green, the grown-ups sometimes end up feeling like scofflaws under the watchful eye of the pint-size eco-police, whose demands grow ever greater, and more expensive.

They pore over garbage bins in search of errant recyclables. They lobby for solar panels. And, in a generational about-face, they turn off the lights after their parents leave empty rooms. ...... In Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, Jan Schmidt, a stay-at-home mother, and Mark Goetz, a professor of furniture design, have watched, amazed, as their 4-year-old son chastises them for letting the water run while they brush their teeth. "He'll come over and turn it off and say, 'Every day is Earth Day,"' Schmidt said. "He learned it at school."

Their older child, Elly, 12, extols the clothesline in her bedroom the way other girls her age might show off a new beanbag chair. ...... And she was a big factor in the family's decision to hang on to their current car instead of buying a bigger one. "With Elly, there's sort of an unspoken thing about not buying an SUV," Schmidt said.

...... And even parents who are impressed by their children's commitment to remake the world can also sometimes feel, well, badgered. Paul Wyckoff, a writer in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, said his son Will, 15, yells at him for "leaving the car idling for a few seconds in the driveway." He has even taken to turning off nightlights to save energy.

MK - I remember reading a while ago about a council [usually a nest of leftist, fascist vipers] in Britain that decided to turn off all street lighting in the early hours of the morning to 'save the planet'. Naturally the residents were alright with this, perhaps they were brow beaten into line, until they realized that the scumbags amongst them also supported this 'darkness', but not to save the planet, rather because it made stealing and other criminal activity a lot easier.

To be fair though, a lot of these initiatives are good, not wasting electricity, walking your ass to the shop instead of driving, turning lights off etc. I do a lot of those things myself, but not to save the planet or something, rather to save what little of the dollar I work for. I would also encourage people to do so as well, but I firmly and vehemently draw the line at brow beating and hectoring people into doing these things, the choice must be yours.

My worry is that the hectoring and bullying of the today's toddlers will one day turn into nanny state regulations and laws of, you will buy a hybrid or else! You will only use 3 squares of toilet paper or else! You will not use the clothes dryer or else! You will only use toilets we deem 'efficient' or else! You will eat less meat or else! You will only have a small family or else! Perhaps you should sterilize yourself to save the planet or else!

You might think that this is all far fetched, but just remember, the communists of old are many of the greenies of today. Today's bullying and hectoring youngsters will become voters in years to come. When they get power, you will bend to their will or else! And when they realize that most [hopefully] of you won't bend to their will, the next step is, those of you who are 'part of the problem' may find yourselves on your knees by a ditch on a lonely road somewhere with an AK at the back of your head!

There's a planet to save, an omelet to be made; the end justifies the means, some wills eggs will have to be broken!

Image thanks to Yahoo Images

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