Kids Get Enough Climate Propaganda Already, News4Jax, They Don’t Need More

A recent article posted at a Jacksonville news affiliate website, “News4Jax,” suggests that kids TV shows should push more climate propaganda and environmentalist content in order to “empower” them to act on those issues. This is just advocating for yet more activist content, of which there is already plenty. Young people are already largely afraid of the future, and this will not help.

The article, “Toddlers and TV: Making screentime matter for children concerned about climate change,” quickly introduces the idea that a majority of kids are scared about their futures because of climate change. News4Jax writes that a recent survey found “54% of children are fearful about what climate change will mean for their future,” and goes on to say that television shows “can be a powerful tool for fostering environmental awareness.” The post quotes an educational scientist from the University of Rhode Island who explains how kids’ shows can be used as vehicles for a particular message, and can even make kids “feel like collectively they can do things to help our earth,” or in other words, encourage them to engage in climate activism.

If the goal is to assuage kids’ fears about the future, however, hitting them with yet more climate alarm propaganda is not going to help.

Climate Realism has covered how the media is largely to blame for anxiety and fear surrounding climate change, in posts here, here, and here, among others. The media and educators already are constantly telling kids that the planet is facing an existential threat in climate change, and that their futures are uncertain unless massive world-spanning action occurs to stop it. When that action does not happen, kids become understandably despondent. What makes this so sinister is the fact that the Earth is not, in fact, in existential danger because of the modest warming of the past century or so. Nor is it in danger of becoming unlivable, as the media likes to claim.

Kids are already bombarded with this kind of alarmist language. The news their parents watch and the news that gets pushed to feeds on social media are all constantly filled with climate change related content, tying every bit of less-than-pleasant weather to climate change, as this website constantly covers and refutes. In schools, climate alarmism can be promoted in every single class—including even physical education or gym class—as was the case in certain schools in New Jersey. This kind of bombardment starts on kids as young as elementary school, which the media lauds. Multiple generations of kids have now grown up being told that their future is doomed.

Further, a recently released U.S. Department of Homeland Security report on existential risks finds that climate change does not fall into that category and explains that activists and media enablers making such claims are expressing worldviews, not science.

In reality, climate related deaths are down 99 percent over the past hundred years, world undernourishment is dropping, and the earth is actually becoming more lush with plant life. Extreme weather is not getting worse, either, and neither are wildfires.

Kids do not need yet another source of climate misinformation and alarm in their lives, they already have far too much exposure to it. News4Jax should be more skeptical about this kind of cheerleading for climate content, especially since as a media outlet, they are themselves a major source for kids’ and adults’ unreasonable anxiety about climate change.