Some of these kids sound insufferable; others merely curious and well-intentioned. It’s the parents’ reaction that’s baffling. Sherrie Mahnami of Concord, California took her four-year-old to see the movie “Arctic Tale.” She didn’t like the part in the movie that “preaches” in favor of compact fluorescent light bulbs. “I thought that was a little much.” Seriously? Would she rather have her kid coming home having internalized the messages in Terminator 3? Other mothers protested when Bacich Elementary School advertised a screening of “An Inconvenient Truth,” because they considered it a political statement.

Some groups are “fighting back.” A nonprofit in Washington released a statement to the press against a new children’s book called “The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” written by Laurie David, one of the producers of An Inconvenient Truth. The release states that the book is “intentionally designed to propagandize unsuspecting children who don’t have enough knowledge to know what is being done to them.” (Curiously, the nonprofit in question, the Natural Resources Defense Council, is not a reactionary coven but an effective environmental action group.) Another book, called The Sky’s Not Falling! Why It’s OK to Chill About Global Warming, tells the kids that “while riding a bike saves energy and is a great exercise, it gives you less time to do other things, like sports or homework.  We drive our car because it gets us to work or play faster.” 

Okay. I’m glad—really glad—that discussion still thrives, that nobody’s buying anything hook, line & sinker. But I’m even gladder that little brats all over the country are ignoring the press releases and pestering their parents for fair-trade coffee and grass-fed hamburgers instead of Cap’n Crunch. If we get the grown-ups thinking the same way, we’ll be on the right track.