This Year, Give Your Children The Gift of Fear

11:17 am, 11/30/07

This Year, Give Your Children The Gift of Fear

It's interesting that global warming activists so often have to target easily frightened children:

A grim Christmas message for kids from the mayor of Seattle. Greg Nickels told small children he's launching "Operation Save Santa" to protect the big guy from global warming. At a Christmas tree lighting, Nickels warned the kids they had to use energy efficient light bulbs, or climate change could melt the North Pole --- and drown Santa, his elves and all his reindeer.

Shouldn't he, uh, turn off the Christmas lights, then?

This kind of thing has been noticed before. In fact, the Washington Policy Center immediately cited NASA data indicating that Nickels may be an imbecile, and Australian Tim Blair notes polls showing that Iowa Democrats don't seem to care about this ridiculous "issue".

"What is the single most important issue in your choice for the Democratic candidate for president?"

The top response was "the war in Iraq," with 33 percent, while 26 percent said "health care." Ten percent chose "economy/jobs," and others identified a dozen other issues. A smart-alecky 1 percent answered, "nothing."

But global warming ranked even lower than "nothing", with one-half percent.

"Let's see what they say when Santa's skeleton, picked clean by ravenous polar bears, is retrieved from the North Pole's boiling waters," says Blair.

For as many as 60% of middle school children, however, it seems to top the charts. We can no longer blame it on the distorting influences of "Captain Planet" reruns.