OPINION/COMMENTARY

Environmentalist Propaganda for Kids

It is sad indeed that writers and photographers can so cleverly use the vast beauty of the Earth to promote wrong-headed, doomsday, collectivist philosophies. In previous issues of Environment & Climate News, I described such malevolence in my reviews of Fatal Harvest (March 2003) and America's Living Oceans (October 2003). The Future of the Earth may be the most insidious of all because its target audience is young people between the ages of 10 and 12, who are susceptible to big pictures, big print, and oversimplified concepts. Young persons who have yet to grasp a significant perspective of our history can be easily taken in by the excellent prose and attractive pictures and drawings in this book. The reader is quickly told of "the good old days" when all of life was better and the Earth was pristine, before fossil fuels destroyed our atmosphere. The authors conveniently forget to describe, for example, life in New York City in 1900, when 100,000 horses walked the streets, creating 2.5 million pounds of manure requiring daily disposal, when 15,000 horses annually died in the city, requiring sanitary disposal, or the filth and disease that horse transportation bred, all of which amply prove the inaccuracy of that fable....