Two teachers, both experienced in environmental
science, became concerned about how their children were being bombarded at
school with exaggerated and gloomy predictions about the state of the
environment. They also found that the children of other parents that they
talked to were becoming depressed and apprehensive about whether they were
going to grow up to live healthy and happy lives. Knowing that the information
being given to their children was exaggerated, alarmist and downright
misleading, Michael Sanera and Jane Shaw wrote an
excellent little book called Facts Not Fear: A Parent’s
Guide to Teaching Children About the Environment. Each of their
book’s 20 chapters were peer-reviewed by a panel of respected environmental
scientists to assure the reader that the data presented was as factual and as
up-to-date as possible.
“Childhood was once supposed to be idyllic
and carefree,” they said. “Children were allowed to be children. But today many
schools are plunging our children into serious environmental activism.” These authors reviewed more than 130
textbooks and 170 environmental books for children. They found that most of
them seriously over-stated environmental problems and were often needlessly
alarmist. They found that impressionable young minds were being saddened and in
some cases traumatised by
their exposure to constant claims
about an imminent ecological disaster.
Facts Not Fear is not an attempt to see the world through
rose-coloured glasses, but it is a book that is balanced by environmental
realism. For sure there are problems to
be addressed in the world, but the message of the book is that the state of the
world in respect to things like acid rain, global warming, ozone layer
depletion, the loss of forests and over-population is not as bad as the
exaggerated reports would have us believe. More importantly, the book points
out how the problems can be successfully addressed as in the case of enormous
improvements being made to the air and water quality throughout the developed
world.
It is important that our youth be inspired
by hope and optimism about their own future and the
future of the world. The alternative to the attitude of hope is despair, and
this is the greatest disease that can infect our youth. It would not be
possible to quantify how young people become school or career drop-outs because
they succumb to this miasma of pessimism that is wholly self-induced by a
culture hell-bent on seeing doom and gloom behind every rosebush.
Far more dangerous than any prospect of a
small climate change is a climate of needless despair over the state of the
world, especially when it is at a time when mankind that has never enjoyed such
longevity and a high standard of living. Despair and meaningless in the face of
a fading future exacerbates depression, and who know how much this could
contribute to drug-taking and youth suicide?
Psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health practitioners readily concede that a positive
outlook and a passion for living play an enormous role in mental well-being.
How is this kind of optimism possible if young people are constantly exposed to
the dirge that the world is going to hell in a hand basket? Or to change the figure of speech, who wants to polish the brass
on a sinking ship?