Everytime Someone Uses the Phrase "Going Green", God Kills a Kitten

It’s rare that my state’s senior U.S. Senator James Inhofe and I agree on much of anything, from social issues to government policy to the role of the media to the separation of church and state. But when it comes to picking sides in the sparring match between the uber-conservative evangelical Inhoff and uber-rich Hollywood producer and global warming activist Laurie David, wife of Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David and producer of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, I think I’m going to have to fall in line with Inhofe.

I may have my liberal blogger’s special bathroom pass revoked for saying it, but I can’t stand the way people like Laurie David are cramming the green movement down my throat, trying to guilt me into buy new light bulbs, all the while living in giant mansions and chartering private jets. Laurie David has written a new book for children called The Down-to Earth Guide to Global Warming in which she furthers her environmental challenge to kiddos, encouraging them to become green Nazis who go around unplugging people’s toasters and telling strangers that only morons drive gasoline-powered vehicles. Another more self-promoting tip she gives kids is to ask that her movie An Inconvenient Truth be shown in class.

Laurie David is not a scientist, and probably couldn't explain much about the processes that go on in the atmosphere or anything about thermodynamics. Instead, Laurie David's whole point, as expressed in this interview on the Today show this morning, is not to give children a badly needed education in earth sciences, but rather indoctrinate them into this "go green" movement that doesn't require any knowledge of science. Her green army of youngsters is then to nag their parents about why daddy doesn't drive a hybrid.

We're hoping that kids actually nag their teachers, their principals. There's so much that can be done on the school level and at the home level.

Laurie David and her co-author Cambria Gordon are pushing hard to get this book into not just elementary school libraries, but also elementary school curricula. And because the book is published by Scholastic, and Laurie David is rich enough and well-known enough, they have a pretty good chance at succeeding. Which would be terrible, since the book is almost entirely propaganda. Thats the real shame behind it, too. There really is good science behind the theory of global warming (sorry, Mr. Greatest Hoax Ever Inhofe), but we're not teaching children enough to actually understand the environmental studies.

I heard Laurie David interviewed on NPR this morning (yes, I get the bathroom pass back!), and believe me, no quote in print can adequately capture how smarmy and nauseating she is in her activism. She says things like "we have to change all these light bulbs to compact fluorescents..." and "we tell the kids 'whenever you do something, think about how is that contributing to global warming'" and "one thing we want kids to do is start a 'green team' at school" and "we want kids to start a 'no-waste policy' at their cafeteria" and "we want kids to ask their parents 'why are the paper towels in our house not made of recycled materials?' and 'why aren't we driving a hybrid car?' and 'why haven't we changed all our light bulbs?'" It's like it never occurs to her that some people aren't made out of money. Or maybe she just doesn't care.

It all reminds me very much of a religion, and all the professed infallibility and hypocrisy that goes with it.

- QP