Essay by Eric Worrall
Ever younger age groups believe they will not survive to adulthood.
Children being ‘taught to be scared’ about climate change, developmental psychologist Clare Rowe claims
Kids across the country are being “taught to be scared” about climate change, according to developmental psychologist Clare Rowe, who has outlined major concerns over the impacts of climate change education on childrens’ mental health.
Matt Hampson Digital Reporter
September 18, 2025 – 5:00AM…
“Children’s mental and physical health is being affected already and those impacts are getting worse,” he [Dr Paul Sinclair] said in a statement on Monday.
However, educational and developmental psychologist Clare Rowe, who specialises in paediatric psychology, took issue with that claim.
…
“It’s huge claims that they’re making in this report and I think that deserves some decent level of scrutiny and not just sympathy,” Ms Rowe told Sky News Australia.
“Kids are absolutely worried about climate change. I’ve seen it in my own clinic.”
…
“But when I look at it, I think: ‘Hang on, kids in capital cities are not faced with increasing bushfires, floods, you know, the direct result of climate change, where are they getting it from’ and they’re being taught to be scared about climate change,” she said.
…
Read more: https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/children-being-taught-to-be-scared-about-climate-change-developmental-psychologist-clare-rowe-claims/news-story/a90230be0196dc8faf6e1365371b15ec
The impact on children’s wellbeing is nothing short of horrific;
Thankfully some kids are receiving pushback against this “educational” onslaught, from parents and grandparents, pushback that environmentalists think is detrimental to turning the kids into little activist fanatics.
… Social hierarchies perpetuated through family, school, and media norms support children making individual choices within existing systems but also delegitimize collective action that might disrupt these systems. This tension is described by Karsgaard and Davidson, who document a participatory research project involving 99 school students from 13 countries that led to the presentation of a white paper on childhood climate citizenship to the IPCC. The authors found that while the children participating in their project most often saw climate change as an issue of justice, they were limited in their ability to imagine different ways of dealing with this issue by the dominant framings of individualized responsibility and government leadership. Despite their age, children felt responsible for their participation in economic systems that damage the environment: “When describing how they might act to address climate change and climate injustices, students tended toward individualist behaviors in response to a deep sense of guilt over consumptive practices” …
Read more: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(24)00100-3
But there are still way too many kids who are falling through the cracks, and having their lives destroyed by relentless teacher delivered climate propaganda. From 2019;
That US Fentanyl crisis isn’t just about Chinese suppliers and Mexican cartels, something has created the misery and despair which convinces people to give up on life, which convinces large numbers of Americans to choose to destroy their own lives with hard drugs. Relentless climate propaganda is a pretty good candidate for the source of that wave of existential despair.
What I’d really like to know, what kind of teacher can tell kids such horrible things? Do some of them get a thrill when they see the light of hope in their little eyes snuffed out, and misery and despair replace their natural childhood happiness?
Even if every word of the worst climate warnings were true, this still wouldn’t justify inflicting such horror on defenceless children. During the WW2 London blitz, parents hiding in bomb shelters with their kids didn’t make them even more frightened by repeating all the nasty ways they could die. Parents tried to distract their kids from the death and destruction occurring above their heads, by creating little islands of safety where the kids could huddle with parents in whatever warmth and comfort could be created in such awful circumstances.
But the radical activists who inflict such nightmares on our children know no such restraint.
One day there will be a full accounting for all the harm these agents of despair have done to our children. People will be held responsible for this evil. But for now all we can do is defend our own islands of safety, like those parents did in the blitz, by complaining to school boards or representatives to remove the worst offenders from the classrooms if we can, otherwise we can do our best to explain to those in our care that sometimes adults lie, and that false stories of imminent catastrophe are as old as mankind.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This supplies evidence to bring civil action against schools and teachers frightening children.
The scare tactics at a young age are beginning to produce highly skeptical older teenagers who were led to believe they would not see adulthood.
Absolutely – but not all the kids are making it through the ordeal of discovering the climate crisis claims they were fed as kids by trusted adults are all a pack of falsehoods.
Keep your eyes on TikTok, Ellison is a serial bad actor. His motivation is greed.
Their motivation became more complex after they discovered they need endless cheap, reliable energy for their AI push, which they believe will deliver them personal medical immortality.
I suspect they would like a world which fuses the Trump energy agenda with their radical social ideas, but thankfully nothing like that is on offer right now. But in the future – my prediction, 2028 will see a big downgrade of Democrat climate agenda to “lets wait until AI solves it”, and probably a bunch of money for nuclear fusion.
That would actually be an ideal next generation scam. Endless taxpayer dollars to a host of start-up companies and NGOs that will produce nothing.
There is nothing new here. The left has gained control of the education system. Indoctrination to leftist ideologies is common. The education system needs a huge shakeup. It is a serious problem.
This is child abuse (btw, thank you for this essay Mr. Worrall).
The climate alarmist crap can and has been rejected by most adults, but children are impressionable — particularly by teachers. That’s the purpose of education, to impress young minds.
When teachers, who are authority figures, inculcate paranoia, confusion, and psychosis into children, those children are severely damaged psychologically.
Look at what the gender dysphoria promotion by schools has done to children. It has driven some of them insane and violently so. The climate alarmist induced psychosis has also bent many children — the Extinction Rebellion crime wave is one example.
I recall when 20 years ago a violent environmental cult planted bombs in schools and lumber mills. The perpetrators were mostly college kids who are still in prison today. Their lives were ruined by sociopaths with a god complex who warped children into violence.
Put the abusers in jail today. Protect your children from insane “teachers”.
This goes back a very long time. In the 16th century, St. Ignatius de Loyola stated, “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man”. It’s important to remember that the Jesuits were created as the principal agency of the Counter-Reformation. Their business was successful religious propaganda.
Nothing has changed. The fanatics still want to manipulate children as a way of controlling them as adults.
The quote goes back further than the 16th century:
~ Aristotle, The Philosophy of Aristotle
Children and religions should never be allowed to associate in any way.
Haven’t numerous societies learned anything over the millenia?
(for the record, I do classify climate catastrophism as a religion)
Hear, hear
Sadly, this will never happen; they’ll just pivot and mutter “the science”.
Except for vague references to the issue, I cannot find where anyone was “held responsible” for the killing of witches. So, I also don’t think any public accounting will be made in today’s climate despair. There may be private remorse.
In grade school we were instructed to “duck & cover.”
“Think of the children!”
They are. They see these souls as the next generation of foot soldiers for the activist movements.
Greta has declared that genocide must be taught in school. Later her quote had “in Gaza” added by media.
There are too many age inappropriate ideologies being brainwashed into innocents who do not have age or worldly experience to evaluate the topics and accept as true what these authority figures push.
Lady YOU are the problem.
Yes, seconded that said lady is the problem.
Far too many people who lack reality and knowledge get involved in education topics because they are sticky beaks with egos and dogmas.
Our children suffer from their ignorance. Geoff S
Sticky Beaks, haven’t heard that one before.
Friend and retired senior, respected journalist Tony Thomas has written a series of articles on inexcusably bad educational interference in Australia
In the last 3 years in the journal Quadrant. Search Quadrant Online and his name in its author lists.
If you are a normal person wishing against activism affecting our children, you might be horrified by the depths of control of propaganda by several plain evil unelected groups pushing scientific and moral untruths.
Teachers now seem to be effectively excluded from deciding what is to be taught and how. Geoff S
Growing up during the Cold War, I didn’t expect to reach 21 without being turned into radioactive ash. Nothing new here except I just continued on with my life and was delightfully surprised that my pessimism did not come true.
I still vividly recall my terrified run through the neighborhood (I was 3) to get home when the air raid sirens went off (1957). I had been told by my parents that when the sirens went off, get home or you will die.
Once home, I sat on the steps to the basement next to Mom. I vividly remember the expression of hopelessness on her face. She could not protect her children from nuclear bombs.