A fantastic report. I wish we had similar events for kids here, too.

Was this organized by Greenpeace with help from schools that sent kids to the event? Or was it based on voluntary participation?

Hi Adela,

Thanks! It was organized by Greenpeace and the Austrian National Youth Council. I think that they organized it together with the schools because the schoolchildren also prepared more than 150 questions in advance that were given to the politicians as not all questions could be answered during this event. I could also ask a friend at Greenpeace if you’re interested in other details or the questions (in German).

Andreas

I’m thinking of trying to organize (or ask Greenpeace here to do it, as I think logistics would be way over my head) something similar here.

Of what I see in the pics, kids seemed interested & I think they would be here, too. Not to mention the environmental awareness built though such an event.

This is great and nice one!
Soon MINI COP15 report from Riga coming form my side

Nice We recently had a similar youth parliament here in Lund. It is really a great thing I think!

This is a very impressive report.

I wish we could see the 150 questions and .... the answers.

Actually, it could be possible to use our tool since we’re a European project providing a visual debate tool on climate change . It deals with complex EU environmental legislation on climate change…

Here is the site : http://www.wave-project.eu

and here is a map of climate change that keeps changing:
<iframe src=‘http://debategraph.org/Flash/fv.aspx?r=610’ frameborder=‘0’ width=‘490’ height=‘650’ scrolling=‘no’></iframe>

This is very similar to Ugratna from my post here: http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think2/post/a_small_girl_gave_a_lesson_to_world_leaders

Children abused in a political campaign. Brainwashed and manipulated. Disgusting. In the era of secularism it was banned to have religious propaganda in schools.

It reminds me of our communist regime in 1980s. Children had to be members of a “pioneer” organisation (blue shirts, red scarves). And they attended “spontaneous” demonstrations.

Mm… communism must have been a paradise Excuse my western ignorance, I thought communism was more about sending political active people to Siberia, than letting children discuss in democratic practice-fora….

Seriously, Vitezslav. Can’t you see that by comparing climate change activism to communism, you spit on the people who actually suffered from real communism, some even in your own country?

Daniel, the children were not “discussing in a democratic forum”. They were manipulated with one-sided biased green propaganda. And then abused as a political weapon against the right-wing parties.

Let me paraphrase Hitler: “We do not need to persuade the adults. We own their children’s minds. We will turn the kids against their parents.”

Pioneer. Hitlerjugend. SSSM…

You really fail to see the similarity? I am disturbed by the comeback of this practice.

Thank you Andreas, you are delightful.
You are also very luminous and merry!

@Vitzslav. You should find someone who lived through communism and visit an event like this. Then talk to them about how much it resembles the communist children propaganda.

I like your positive view!

@Daniel. I do not need to search for anyone. In 1980s as a kid I was a member of the “Pioneer” organisation myself. Just like everyone. I swore an oath of allegiance to Communist Party. At school we were told to make banners and go to anti-capitalist demonstrations. At school they told us, that Lenin was a good person.

We were brainwashed, just like these kids today. We were to young to understand it.

I begin to understand you Vitezslav, I have a Russian friend and another from Poland!

Paul, I am glad you begin to understand. We in Czechoslovakia got rid of an authoritarian regime in 1989. So now we are very suspicious to anything that resembles it.

Exactly what I have understood!

Yeah… I see that you are suspicious, and you have all right to be. But calling the Austrian regime of today authoritarian and comparing it to the czech communist regime greatly underestimates the totalitarianism. Maybe talk to someone who lived through the fifties? Or a Moldovan whose grandparents were sent to Siberia for owning the wrong books, or simply for being Moldovan? I am pretty sure they would tell you that communism was not about happy go lucky youth parliaments.

Violence is not the only path to authoritarian regime. Violence is not necessary, when there is no resistance. Step-by-step reforms suffice. But the result may be the same: An authoritarian regime, bans everywhere, no democracy, end of free speech.

Philippe, I will translate the questions soon and can then give them to you. Moreover, I think that I will blog about them and try to answer some of them as the schoolchildren didn’t receive answers to those 150 questions from the environmental speakers yet.

Vitezslav, comparing such actions with communism or national socialism is just disgusting as you should know how many people were killed under those regimes. It is outrageous to allege someone that he or she employs nazi/communist techniques and abuses children for spreading absolutistic views. We live in a democracy and unfortunately the Austrian government is the best example that many governments still don’t take climate change and the youth’s worries seriously.

Andreas, try a bit more empathy.

What would you think, if the whole school of children would come to that forum with banners “stop environuts” and “climate change is a hoax” and all of the kids would say climate-skeptical opinions? You would think they were mannipulated and brainwashed by Big Oil. You would protest against how one-sided and biased is their education.

As for totalitarianism without violence… that would be something new to history.

“Environuts” is not a word that anyone outside the climate sceptic internet uses, so I doubt it would be seen o banners.

If you want to arrange a similar event saying that “climate change is a hoax”, there would not be any law to stop you, Vitezslav. But good luck finding someone to cooperate with. Again… not many people outside the internet believes this.

Interesting discussion. There is one really important difference about regimes here.
In Soviet Union regime (I wouldn’t call it communism (upgraded socialism or totalitarianism maybe) as it wasn’t from theory) kids where trained to see one true point or reason, they were trained to stand by that truth. If someone remember Mr.Pavlov(psychiatrist), he even had a system. It was active in Russian part of Union, satellite countries where not as affected by it. In nowadays kids have enormous access to information (good and bad too). Today we are not teaching about information, but about perceiving, separating, assessment and opinion building. And this example is a good move how kids who have opinion about climate change are expressing it. And it is far better then those kids who are affected (on my point bad) with CS or Warcraft violent computer games from morning till night!

Daniel, you wrote: Again… not many people outside the internet believes this.

Well. The quantity of AGW believers and disbelievers is cca 50:50. See http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/environment_energy/energy_update

Even the Greenpeace guy in Copenhagen told us, that cca 30 or 40% of people are climate skeptical. Remember that?

But we do not control school textbooks and major media. Your official green church does. Successful “memes”. Congratulations on that.

Totalitarianism without violence is a normal thing. In 1970s and 1980s the communist regime no longer killed opposition. He just kicked them out of job/school. The Chinese now punish dissidents by mere “imprisonment at home”. Totality evolves just as censorship methods evolve.

@ Aia: You wrote: “Today we are not teaching about information, but about perceiving, separating, assessment and opinion building”.

Not true. Kids are told at schools, that CO2 causes warming (it is vice versa, see the ice cores). And they are told, that CO2 increase has strong impact on temperatures (not proven hypothesis).

I was an English teacher for a couple of years. Grammar school. And this is what we had in our textbooks! They put the green propaganda even in language education. Instead of teaching the small kids, how to go buy a train ticket, I had to teach them such tonguetwisters as as “biodegradability.”

Is that not brainwashing?

It is not brainwashing, it is wrong teaching!

Call it what you want, Aija. We should teach children science. Presenting unproven hypothese and lies as facts, is not science. It is religion. Indoctrination. In secular state, religion should be kept out of school - as a private matter.

We need to provide kids with information and teach them to make decisions!

There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.

A poll result is always difficult to interpret. For example in the Rasmussen case, 47% answers “long term planetary trends” to the question “Is Global Warming caused primarily by human activity or by long term planetary trends?”

I think I would also tick this answer if I was forced to choose in this way. The point is not what happens outside our reach, the point is what we can do.

What I refer to are the real people I meet in everyday life. Did you meet anyone who thought that the climate is not changing? Did you meet anyone who thought that modern civilization does not affect the planet?

What is this “official green church”. It must be everything but official if the adherents don’t know that it exist… did you ever see the similarities between sceptic’s conspiracy theories and the conspiracies agains jews and free mansons in the 19th century?

“Control school books” eh… how? There is no central control of school books in the EU. In Sweden I as a teacher can choose whatever book I want, or teach without a book if I find it appropriate…

There are two things that make your conspiracy theory very strange:

a) How can there be a central control of opinion, when there is not central power, for example to check school books?

b) If you believe in free market and free science, how can you explain that the “junk science” came to power in fierce opposition to the Reagan-Bush Powerhouse?

Which communist regime? It is true that there was a normalization in the 70’s in Eastern Europe, but violence persisted in torture cells etc., albeit more hidden.

More important is that the “calm” 70’s are inconceivable without a prior period of terror that makes all resistance look meaningless. Where do you find this “terror phase” now? Austria in the 80’s?

Your insights in totalitarism are true. I respect this, but when you put the name “totalitarism” on anything, just to prevent your opponents from carry out their politics, you also derive the word of its meaning. Without a meaningful definition of totalitarism we can not understand the history of Europe, and are bound to repeat our mistakes.

I agree, Aia. Provide them with information. Not misinformation.

Daniel, I think AGW is a religion. Religion is a grass-roots movement, though organised by a cabal of Gurus. If the memes are vivid, they spread, party organised, party spontaneously. This is how Christianity was spreading for example. Each era has some erroneous ideas, that are highly popular and are in textbooks… Alchemy, frenology, nationalisation.

But the believers, once they spread into influential positions, try to censor information according to their beliefs.

Marcuse. Lukacs. Frankfurt School.

@Vitezslav Please I am Aija not Aia ...
How you find which is totally true source of information due to climate change.. Or in this case you say that better do not provide any, if we do not have definitely certain one?

Aija, you cannot provide kids with an information, if you do not have the information. Sorry for that. You can just provide them with various hypotheses - but not just one. You have to say: alarmist say this, skeptics say this…

You can believe in God, but you cannot teach kids “it is a fact, that there is God and his name is John”. You do not have evidence. And you would discriminate the atheists and those who believe in some other deity.

I think you do bring up a really interesting question. Is today all things about discussion
and believe or ignore after it, or they are just said and accepted.

About religion, children do not get a chance to choose one, it is chosen by parents and surrounding they are. You don’t chose your parents either. So maybe there are things or opinions you don’t chose, but can change later.

I agree that school is not a place to provide only one truth, but maybe there is also role of perception. For grammar school it is not easy to understand such a diversity of opinions in society and world.

Thats why I say that it is about learning to find, understand, discuss, filter, access and decide on information. And that is what school need to do. And there is nothing about Soviet regime here. Was not eligible comparison.

Sorry, but when I see the pictures above, I see a deja-vu: Pioneers in blue shirts, and red scarves reciting pre-rehearsed poems and wawing banners “Peace,not imperialism”.

I agree that parliament looks pretty in Soviet style (that surprised me too), but that is not why you say it .. WHY? these children can’t go and ask what they want to hear an answer for?

Politicians in this case have all instruments to provide real life case and solutions, situations. It is option to take and in a moment when kids have more information or reference maybe from books only it is a deja-vu: political crash..

Aija, the kids are not merely asking. The voice out their opinion.

And it surprises me, how uniform is the opinion of the children.

The public opinion about AGW is cca 50:50. So far we have no evidence, whether CO2 has strong forcing upon temperatures.
How is it possible that all these kids share the alarmist viewpoint and want to cut down CO2?

Explanation: The skeptical arguments were hidden from them. They have incomplete information.

But mainly we think and political position in world is about cutting CO2 emissions. This is a biggest deal in COP15 too, in media, everywhere.

How can you say that they are not asked about. If we see proportion pro and contra about CO2 emissions then it is obvious why their opinion is like this.

And if we add Austrian situation about CO2 emission NO-cuts, then it is pretty good questions to ask in parliament ..

Dear all. thats indeed a very interesting discussion. just for clearification on “abusing school-kids” and teaching “unproven hypothesis”:
1.) those kids who attended the youth.parliament came either by themselves, or were already taking place in a climate-parliament in their own school. it was their decision before to come to this event. Something that is “optional” is for me part of a free decision, possible just in democracy.

2.) climate-change is no longer an unproven hypothesis. United Nations prove it, the majority of all climate-scientists prove it and speak up for it! So please dear Vitezslav - wake up!

@Hanna This is a nice comment!

Hanna, climate change is not a hypothesis. Climate change occurrs every day, every century for millions of years. This is why it cannot be stopped!!

The strength of CO2 forcing on temperatures is unknown. It is just a hypothesis. Wake up! In the last 10 years CO2 emissions went up by 30%. So why don’t we have warming? No honest scientist is taking AGW seriously anymore.

Poor brainwashed children. Like in the times, when they were brainwashed by creationism or communism. They are defenceless.

Vitezslav, it essentially doesn’t matter if we cannot agree on what causes climate change because increased floods, droughts and other environmental disasters - especially in developing countries - are facts and therefore we have a global responsibility to help those people. Moreover, even we cannot agree on whether it is necessary to cut emissions, we definitely have to transform our economy to a low-carbon economy because of peak oil. This argument not only applies to oil but also to a lot of other resources that we overconsume due to an unsustainable culture of consumerism. Moreover, renewable energy can enable people to produce their own energy and thereby become independent of big (multinational) energy companies.

In short, even if we disagree on some basic facts, we should draw the same conclusions if we take a look at this world and raise awareness for solidarity and sustainability.

Question: How will lowering of CO2 emissions help us against climate change, floods etc, if climate change is not caused by CO2????

Question: Banning cheap fossil fuels and forcing the use of expensive alternative fuels… how does it help to poor people suffering from climate change?

Question: Every year the production of oil globally is rising and new reserves are discovered. Why are you talking about the peak oil? Why should we hurry to low-carbon fuels? Why shouldn’t we switch to low-carbon fuels only once they become cheaper than oil?

What lowering of CO2 emissions would still mean even if it would not mean anything in terms of mitigating climate change: Higher quality of life with regards to traffic, higher independence in terms of energy supply, sustainable resource use in the face of peak oil / peak everything, etc.

Renewable energy sources are not necessarily more expensive than fossil energy sources if you internalize externalities. Moreover, technological progress in the field of renewable energy as well as peak oil will continue to narrow the price gap in the future.

@Vitezslav

Question: How will lowering of CO2 emissions help us against climate change, floods etc, if climate change is not caused by CO2????

Answer: If co2 has any effect at all on temperature, lowering co2 emissions will help us mitigate warming caused by other factors.

Question: Banning cheap fossil fuels and forcing the use of expensive alternative fuels… how does it help to poor people suffering from climate change?

Answer: More expensive transports will make local production and small scale farming more profitable, compared to multinational supply-chains. This should be positive to a libertarian as it will give the individuals more power over their own life, encourage decentralisation etc.

Question: Every year the production of oil globally is rising and new reserves are discovered. Why are you talking about the peak oil? Why should we hurry to low-carbon fuels? Why shouldn’t we switch to low-carbon fuels only once they become cheaper than oil?

Answer: The peak in new discoveries of oil fields was some time in the 1960’s. For the IEA’s projections to come true, we need to find ca. 5 new Saud Arabia’s. Where should we look for them? On the moon?
If you want to use oil, go ahead and pay your own bills. The big problem is the effect of the oil price has on food prices. As you could see in 2008.