An environmental lawfare group that represents children and uses tactics some critics argue amount to “brainwashing” and “indoctrination” has drawn scrutiny for the way it integrates activist talking points into educational training materials. [emphasis, links added]
Our Children’s Trust offers curricula to teachers that introduce students to the mindset behind youth climate lawsuits, encouraging them to consider the dangers of fossil fuel reliance.
Though U.S. courts have dismissed several of its cases in recent years, including most recently on Wednesday in Montana, the group continues to offer its curricula to minors and is now taking its fight against American fossil fuels to the international stage.
The group’s social media often highlights minors‘ pleas for climate justice, which some critics argue is emotionally manipulative and fuels anxiety among children.
“They’re using these children to advance climate-nuisance lawsuits, which keep getting thrown out,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the DCNF. “They brainwash these kids, indoctrinate them, and it’s really awful for the kids. They’re so scared about their future — they’re not getting married, they’re not having children. It’s just absolutely appalling.”
Our Children’s Trust offers classroom materials for high school teachers that include several activities, one of which is to conclude with instructions to:
“[E]xplain to students that there is currently an active campaign to address the United States’ role in the climate crisis underway in federal court. Introduce students to Juliana v. U.S., using the powerpoint for support. Explain that the case is only possible because 21 youth have spoken up about how the climate crisis negatively impacts their lives.”
The group brands itself as “a non-profit public interest law firm that provides strategic, campaign-based legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate,” according to its website.
“We support our youth clients and amplify their voices before the third branch of government in a highly strategic legal campaign that includes targeted media, education, and public engagement work to support the youths’ legal actions,” its website states. “Our legal work – guided by constitutional, public trust, human rights laws, and the laws of nature – aims to ensure systemic and science-based climate recovery planning and remedies at federal, state, and global levels.”
Our Children’s Trust features educational materials that argue that administrations across generations, including the Obama and Clinton administrations, have helped contribute to the “climate crisis” now burdening the next generation.
The group includes an infographic in its curricula that labels Congress as “compromised,” the White House as “politicized,” and the courts as the avenue for “justice.”
Alleigh Marré, executive director of the American Parents Coalition (APC), told the DNCF that Our Children’s Trust is “stoking fear of an enormous world-ending climate crisis in kids when they’re very young and impressionable.”
“Using kids to move forward the adult agenda is just becoming a widespread and broadly used tactic on the left — everything from gender to climate, etc. And this is just the latest example of using that fear in kids at a really, really young age to advance the agenda,” Marré told the DCNF.
Marré added that though children should care about the environment, Our Children’s Trust is “shepherding these kids through their curriculum and their pipeline and using them as mini-activists to promote their agenda and to advance their causes.”
“The implications are much larger than the left scoring bullet points and having names of 12- and 13-year-olds on their lawsuits,” Marré told the DCNF.
“The fear that is stoked around this is making the generation of childbearing adults not want to have children. … [Our Children’s Trust] is using fear and anxiety as a tactic in the developing mind and process of childhood — that’s just fully inappropriate.”
Other materials encourage students to consider questions like “what do you think of the idea of youth turning to the court system to spur systemic change?” and “can you think of other systemic changes that the Courts may be able to aid in?”
Isaac noted that so-called “climate anxiety” has been on the rise, with recent studies showing that young people are afraid to have children due to their worries about a warming world.
He argued that groups like Our Children’s Trust may not only heighten this anxiety among Gen Z, but they also elevate inexperienced voices while calling for extreme climate mandates that ignore the dangers of energy poverty.
“It’s very rare that a teenager is a policy expert in a particular field, especially when it comes to something so critical as energy production and electric generation,” Isaac said.
Top image via Barbara McDowell Social Justice Center/YouTube screencap
Read rest at Daily Caller
