By Paul Driessen
Monday, May 27, 2013
“We’re from the Earth Guardians group, and we’re working
on fracking and how it’s going to affect our future and our health. So we wrote
this song for all the gas companies that are putting their profits ahead of our
future.”
With that prelude, 12-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez and
his 9-year-old brother Itzcuauhtli launched into an anti-fracking rap song for
Evergreen Middle School students whose teacher had invited them to journey 40
miles from their home in “the People’s Republic of Boulder,” Colorado. The song
was well rehearsed, spirited, clever – and no doubt assisted by their mother,
the founder and executive director of Earth Guardians, and maybe even by
Boulder’s former mayor, an EG advisor.
The boys have been inculcated in Aztec and Hard Green
ideology from birth. As EG members, they’re dedicated to “educating” other
children about “sustainability,” “dangerous climate change” and
“earth-friendly” renewable energy. In an era when too many babies are having
babies, it’s not surprising that children are indoctrinating children. Not
surprising, but not beneficial either.
Moreover, the teacher had failed to follow school policy,
get permission to bring in outside propagandists, or present other
perspectives. Unhappy parents raised a stink with Principal Kris Schuh, and the
school district promised to distribute “pro-oil and gas literature” to secure
some balance.
Fracking, of course, is horizontal drilling and hydraulic
fracturing, a revolutionary technology that definitely will affect our future
and our health – for the better.
Although fracking has been used for 60 years, in
combination with deep horizontal drilling it has sent US oil and gas production
sharply upward for the first time in decades, turned “imminent depletion” into
another century of affordable petroleum, generated millions of jobs and
billions of dollars in government revenues, kept home heating and electricity
prices from skyrocketing in the face of EPA’s war on coal, brought a resurgence
in US petrochemical and other industries, and (in conjunction with our still
weak economy and high unemployment) helped reduce CO2 emissions. It’s meant
fewer oil imports, improved balance of trade, and more opportunities to lift
more people out of poverty worldwide.
In fact, a recent IHS Global Insight report concludes
that, in the United States alone, fracking has already created 1.7 million new
direct and indirect jobs, with the total likely to rise to 3 million jobs over
the next eight years. It’s added $62 billion to federal and state treasuries,
with that total expected to rise to $111 billion by 2020. And by 2035, it could
inject over $5 trillion in cumulative capital expenditures into the economy,
while generating over $2.5 trillion in cumulative additional government
revenues.
By contrast, $26 billion taken from taxpayers and given
to wind, solar and biofuel energy projects via Department of Energy subsidies
and loan guarantees since 2009 created only 2,298 permanent jobs, at a cost of
$11.45 million per job, the Institute for Energy Research calculates, using DOE
data.
If more of this new natural gas were devoted to
generating electricity – instead of just backing up 40,000 US wind turbines –
millions of birds and bats would not be slaughtered every year, and vital
species would not be driven to the brink of extinction in wildlife habitats
that have been blanketed by turbines.
The Earth Guardians ignore all of this, and claim
hydraulic fracturing is poisoning our air and water.
The facts say otherwise. As the film FrackNation and
numerous articles and reports have documented, there has never been a confirmed
case of groundwater contamination due to fracking, despite numerous
investigations by state agencies and the US Environmental Protection Agency.
There is no evidence of air or people being poisoned, and companies continue to
improve their technologies, to reduce methane leakage and employ more
biodegradable and “kitchen cabinet” chemicals.
And still the Earth Guardians deliver outright falsehoods
about fracking, by children to children, in public schools funded by taxpayer
dollars. Perhaps this goes on because teachers and school administrators fail
to recognize the potential harm, or are themselves devoted to promoting extreme
environmentalist ideologies. Certainly they failed to exercise their
responsibility and authority as educators to provide a balanced curriculum.
They failed to see how they were being used by groups with political agendas,
to inculcate a distorted dogma into a new generation of Americans.
Why is it that the Earth Guardians, Sierra Club and similar
groups detest fracking? Maybe because this technology demolishes their Club of
Rome claims that mankind is about to run out of petroleum – or because it means
fossil fuels are again on the ascendency, making wind and solar even less
viable and further demonstrating that wind energy is a far less sustainable
energy resource that petroleum.
How vulnerable are America’s youth to this brainwashing?
With young people spending 7.5 hours a day viewing television, music and social
media like Facebook, they’re almost ready-made targets for political groups
that use these communications trends to promote narrow views. Without facts and
data to counter the often entertaining messages – especially when they are
delivered in schools – children tend to accept what authority figures put in
front of them.
Even older students are vulnerable to being spoon-fed
incorrect information. And student voters who are reluctant or too
disinterested to seek truthful information can have a profound impact on U.S.
elections and national policy.
In 2011 college professors Josipa Roksa and Richard Arum
surveyed 925 college students two years after graduation about their
transitions into the labor force. In addition to discovering that only slightly
more than half had found full-time jobs, Roska and Arum found that the
students’ “lack of awareness of current events … was startling.” Thirty-two
percent reported “that they read a newspaper only monthly or never.” It makes
you wonder whether colleges are doing their most fundamental job: teaching
students to think, rather than merely to parrot politically correct mantras –
whether they are preparing students to become intelligent, informed, active
members in a functioning democratic society.
Roska and Arum wrote, “This lack of engagement is as
troubling as their financial difficulties – it can hardly be a good sign for a
democratic society when many of its citizens, including highly educated ones,
are not aware of or engaged with what is going on in the nation and world.”
Yet, as we learned in the 2008 election, young voters
have the power to select a president. If their political choices are based on a
lack of knowledge – or even worse, on propaganda – the nation will suffer.
It’s time for all our schools, K through graduate school,
to make sure our students are presented with and taught to ponder and debate
all sides of these important and complex questions. Our future depends on it.
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