This week, Democrats in Congress engaged in public child abuse.  They invited young climate activists to demand drastic actions be taken to avert a climate disaster.  One featured witness was 17 year old Jamie Margolin, who told the Committee members, “I don’t think a lot of people in Congress understand the conversations that are happening every day in American high schools.”  Jamie explained that young people fear for their futures.  “We are ‘Generation GND’, the generation of the Green New Deal.  The Green New Deal is a new chapter in American history.  Transforming our culture into one that celebrates and enables radical climate action.”  “I want the entirety of congress, in fact the whole US government, to remember the fear and despair that my generation lives with every day, and I want you to hold onto it.  How do I even begin to convey to you what it feels like to know that within my lifetime the destruction that we have already seen from the climate crisis will only get worse?”  “Everyone who will walk up to me after this testimony saying I have such a bright future ahead of me, will be lying to my face.  It doesn’t matter how talented we are, how much work we put in, how many dreams we have, the reality is, my generation has been committed to a planet that is collapsing.”  Jamie founded the group Zero Hour.  The group’s website says, “Zero Hour will educate communities around the country and abroad about the systems of oppression.”  Zero Hour names as root causes of climate change Capitalism, Racism, Sexism, Colonialism.  WOW.  In these pages, I often have noted that the Green movement is the new face of global Marxism/Socialism.  Zero Hour proves my point.  The group’s founding principles prove that “climate activism” is a proxy for the radical Left.  Here are some of its principles: “Black lives matter.  Queer and trans people must be heard.  Rape culture must be dismantled.  People with disabilities must be included and respected.  Marginalized cultures must be treated with dignity.  Transformative justice is true justice.”  It’s even more overt.  Jamie’s group says, capitalism, colonialism, racism, and patriarchy have led to climate change, therefore we must shift our culture away from these systems.  Now, I have no objection to Jamie’s activism or her zeal to make a difference.  These are laudable traits.  I just think she’s being used by nefarious forces that care far more about political subjugation than about the climate.  So let me address  an open letter to Jamie.

Dear Jamie,

I strongly disagree with the drastic actions that you and your group would impose upon me and your fellow Americans in the guise of a cure for climate change.  Many of the positions you take are laudable, for instance, protecting the rights of marginalized people and groups.  I share that goal.  However, it is apparent that you are being used by political forces that do not share your benevolent intentions.  This is not your fault.  You are one of the victims of educational malpractice, by the system, as Zero Hour would say, “also known as ‘the State,'” which has refused to teach you about history, and has indoctrinated you with the notion that diversity extends merely to skin pigmentation, and not to opinions.  One of the founding principles of your group is,”We will be humble and learn from each other.”  That’s a good start, but by “each other” I hope you include people outside your group, because one is truly humble only when one is willing to consider what Al Gore might call inconvenient truths.  I certainly understand your fear for the future.  But you should understand that yours is not the first generation to live with such fears.  17 year olds in 1941 faced destruction in their lifetimes.  Millions of them died before the war was over.  When I was a child, we lived with the prospect of imminent nuclear war.  In school, we practiced sheltering under our desks, and we had a bomb shelter in the basement.  In 1962, we came within a hair’s breath of an end far more frightening than a rise in temperatures and melting ice.  You’ve accepted the Green New Deal prediction of climate disaster within 10 or 12 years.  This no doubt feeds your fear and despair, but understand that doomsday hyperbole is not new to your generation.  You respect scientists, and so do I, but their previous apocalyptic predictions have been wrong.  At the first Earth Day in 1970 there were predictions of world-wide famine and the exhaustion of all fossil fuels by 2000.  In the 1970’s scientists predicted a “new Ice Age.” Those things didn’t happen.  “Scientists” keep telling you every month of every year is “the hottest on record.”  The historical record refutes this.  It was much hotter during the Holocene Maximum about 7,000 years ago.  You are led to believe that climate change is a new phenomenon.  It’s not.  17,000 years ago, glacial ice 5 times higher than the Space Needle covered your city of Seattle.  14,000 years ago it melted.  More recently, we experienced “the Little Ice Age,” a 500 year period of extreme cold.  These climate changes were not caused by Capitalism, Racism, Sexism, or Colonialism, any more than the recent changes have been.  Don’t get me wrong.  I admire your dedication.  What I disagree with is your conclusion that the only way to deal with environmental concerns is to destroy our form of government; to trade our liberty for the tyranny of a totalitarian dictatorship, because if you get what you’re asking for, that is your future.  Our system isn’t perfect, it’s just the best flawed system in the world.  The American form of government, that you would scrap has remedied environmental crises far more pressing than a one degree rise in temperature in 100 years.  In the 1970’s, we were using leaded gasoline, and were expelling lead into the atmosphere.  We ended that.  Air pollution was so bad that we had acid rain falling from the skies, and water pollution was so bad that a river in Ohio caught fire.  We fixed it.  We can debate the significance of CO2 levels.  But an inconvenient truth is that  after rising for decades, CO2 levels in the U.S. have declined in recent years to the lowest measured since 1950.  You may say we can do better, and maybe you’re right, but remember that the CO2 levels weren’t reduced by communists marching with signs, but rather by the same capitalists and the same government that you want to replace.  In short Jamie, if you succeed in trading our form of government for your socialist utopia, you will find out what fear and despair really are.  Don’t stop trying to make things better, but look and think before you leap.