OPINION:
If you look at maps of the United States that depict the intensity of public opinion on climate change, you’ll find them strikingly similar to the county-by-county maps of recent presidential elections. Americans on the West Coast, in New England and along the Amtrak Acela Corridor are far more likely to be worried about the climate than their fellow citizens elsewhere.
Those are among the most liberal places in the country, reliably blue counties every Election Day. It follows that they would share similar fixations, including something they promote called “climate anxiety.”
If the left believes something is bad, you would think they would like it to stop, but that’s not the case with climate anxiety because it’s obvious that they want people to contract it and spread it. They are specifically targeting children, radicalizing them and then setting them loose as climate lawsuit delivery devices.
You can accurately characterize this as a form of grooming because they are preparing children for use as political bludgeons to pound radical climate policy into existence. Some who have been involved are glad they no longer are.
Lucy Biggers, social media editor for The Free Press, once created climate content for NowThis Media. Today, she regrets that work because she knows the information was distorted.
“For years, I walked around convinced the world would be unlivable within a decade,” she wrote on Substack last month. “What I didn’t realize is that the science never actually said that. In fact, thanks to the technological advances of modern society, we’re safer from climate risks than ever before.”
Still, climate activists won’t let facts get in the way of a good narrative, and they won’t stop directing their relentless messaging to children.
In 2018, Greta Thunberg burst onto the scene at age 15 when she staged a one-person “School Strike for Climate” outside the Swedish parliament. Her main goal: to scare the daylights out of young people.
“You told us that the future was something to look forward to,” she said in a speech to the British Parliament in 2019. “And the saddest thing is that most children are not even aware of the fate that awaits us. We will not understand it until it’s too late.”
Ms. Thunberg’s activism led to the “Fridays for Future” crusade, which encouraged children globally to boycott school one day each week. You might think education leaders would view this unfavorably, but you would be wrong.
On the contrary, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, thought it was awesome.
In a column posted on the AFT website, Ms. Weingarten decried the “tyranny” of making students take tests because it interferes with “project-based learning.” She also wrote movingly about a day when a bunch of American children decided to be truant all at once in a Fridays for Future “Global Climate Strike.”
“Students across the United States walked out of school to participate,” she gushed. “Educators, including AFT members, didn’t just show up; they helped navigate an array of policies in various districts regarding student absences, logistical support, and participation in student-led actions — as well as teaching classroom lessons on climate change.”
The goal is to generate climate anxiety in as many young people as possible and then deploy these children as plaintiffs in lawsuits against energy interests. Climate anxiety has been central to the claims of many lawsuits.
In the 2015 landmark case Juliana v. United States, 21 plaintiffs, ages 8 to 19, complained of depression and nightmares in their lawsuit over climate change.
In Held v. Montana, filed in 2020, one original plaintiff was only 2 years old when the case was filed. In total, 16 plaintiffs alleged fear of the imminent end of the world.
“I’m not sure if I can morally or ethically have children of my own,” one said.
In 2023’s Genesis B. v. EPA, 18 California children ages 8 to 17 sued the government over the climate. One said her climate anxiety “rises to the level of panic attacks, which she manages by engaging in therapy and climate action.”
In Lighthiser v. Trump, filed in May, one teenager said climate anxiety is “an elephant sitting on her chest” like a “crushing weight” that makes it hard to breathe.
Many other cases are funded and argued by the leftist organization Our Children’s Trust. Some have been dismissed, and some have been successful, but it is certainly plausible that the children in each case were genuinely frightened.
If they truly were experiencing paralyzing horror, it’s because it was implanted in them by leftist influencers, activists and educators.
No doubt these children really were traumatized, but it wasn’t the environment that did it.
It was the environmentalists.
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist and founder of Line Drive Public Affairs. He served as a senior adviser on the 2024 Trump campaign and as communications director on the 2020 Trump campaign.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.