"Scary Green Monsters"

This is a newspaper article that was recently in the Wall Street Journal. The writer talks about how green messages are taking over books and magazines that children and young adults are reading, TV shows they are watching, and websites they are visitng. It may be thougt that this is not a big deal, but because of the things that children are being told - our planet is in grave danger, we must do everything in our power to save it - they are horrified at the simplest of things. In the article, Meghan Gurdon writes:

"Susceptible doubt that we're allheaded for a despoiled, immiserated future unless they start planting pansies in their old shoes, using dryer lint as mulch and practicing periodic vegetarinanism. Not surprisingly, many young people are anxious. The more impressionable among them are coming to believe that their smallest decisions could have catastrophic effects on the globe"..."They're children for goodness' sake: They tend to believe what adults tell them - minus the nuance."

She then goes on to give examples of things that friends' children have done:

"Thus we have the spectacle of a 12-year-old becoming distraught when her father orders seared tuna at a restaurant (this happened to a friend of mine), on account of over-fishing, or a 6-year-old (son of an acquaintance) panicking at the prospect of even a yogurt container going into the trash: 'But I can use it for a toy!'"'

(To read the article, click on the picture.)