Our KIds

 

 

Our Kids

 

Albert died recently, I’ve known him since April 1965, and over the past few months, watching his decline wasn’t easy. I used to pay him a weekly visit, as much for myself as for him because he was the last person around me who had the ‘old knowledge’. It’s the cycle of life and we were well aware of the fact. Sooner or later, the old must give way to the young and I can thank my good fortune because on my daily morning’s walk, I see the same kids on their way to school and most give a smile or a hello, some stop for a few words and I’ve even been sung to by some Tongan siblings. I’ve been doing so for five years now and some of them have moved on, while others have become school seniors. The important thing is the connection and smiles, I have no idea of their names might be, or what their lives are really like… not that I want to, but I hear the statistics and do notice some aren’t as regular attendees as others. I often wonder what’s behind those wide smiles.

 

Linda Creed wrote: I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside, give them a sense of pride to make it easier. Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be.

 

Basically, we’re failing our kids and have been for some time, and it’s getting worse! In the telling, it’s best first to draw from experience and I can say my childhood was pretty good; fortunately, I saw no hint of family violence and was encouraged to ‘use my brain and save my back’ because there were chores to be done. During my early days of forestry training I saw some things that I can relate. Near where I was based, there was a ‘drying out hospital’, well that’s what we called it, it was a hospital where alcoholics were treated. The hospital used the forest to reintroduce ‘cured’ men into the workforce, the only trouble was that none of them were cured, all of them were returned men having served in World War II and their alcohol use was just a symptom of a deeper mental trauma. They stayed in the single men’s camp with us and tried to work side by side with us. The detail is unimportant… what they had experienced was.

 

While I was working in Tanzania, there was a serious food shortage and I decided to do something about it in the schools I worked with. I was frustrated because the well-known children’s charities were not prepared to help because ‘the government hadn’t declared a food shortage’, one of those charities used my report to raise funds, but we, nor the kids we were trying to help, never saw any of it. We did receive funds through my personal contacts and when we had the food, the village governments wanted control of it, to sell to their mates. The fact is, food shortage is common in Africa and the authorities don’t care because they have money in their pockets so their families are ok. So, the children suffer… on average they were going three days without food and to break that food drought they had banana mixed into water and took half a glass. After giving a village environmental seminar, the village government hosted me to a meal… while hungry kids waited for me outside! The ‘adults’ refused to share! However, ordinary people value their kids… there’s no government handout when people age, which is why, in the past the birth rate was high. There was a high attrition rate among children, so to ensure someone was left to care for the elderly, they needed the higher birth rate.  

 

I read Exodus by Leon Uris in a forestry hut high in the mountains, some time after seeing the movie, so I had some understanding what Israel is about, and on my crackly radio, listening at night, I heard about the 1967 Six-Day war, and Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defence chief, I remember he had an eye patch. Later, there were headlines in the local paper where Golda Meir said, ‘Peace will come when Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.’ And all the time the PLO leader Yassa Arafat, seemed doggedly unprepared to negotiate.  So I gained my own perspective. The brother of an old mate visited Israel not so long ago, and as they sat drinking wine in the evening, their ‘entertainment’ was watching Hamas rockets flying over only to be destroyed by Israel’s defences. There’s something sick about that! I watch protests here and abroad demanding an Israeli ceasefire, but for me, it’s difficult to get past the fact that if those Hamas… call them what you like, had stayed at home instead of venturing out on 7 October, none of the deaths would have happened. They say that in war, truth is the first casualty, but I’d put children first. The situation in Ukraine is different but basically the same, blood doesn’t have to flow to cause mental issues for children or their parents, kids begin life innocently, and adults corrupt them because they are unable to unsee the horrors they witness.

 

There’s a problem in the West, even if there is no conflict, life is easier than it has ever been in history, there is far less manual work, more free time, more discretionary money is spent on entertainment than food, there is more food than has ever been produced historically, life expectancy is up, death by weather events is down and we can more easily combat disease… yet nobody is happy. A few years ago, there were the yolo’s, maybe they still exist… the ‘you only live once’ people who didn’t think responsibility was a requirement of life. Such attitudes have consequences. Before Covid, school students were failing in the three R’s and that’s multiplied since the Covid lockdown, the latest in this country was that only 49% were up to an acceptable standard. The lockdowns didn’t serve our kids well… the big question is, did ‘the authorities’ think through the consequences of lockdowns, and did they know the virus wasn’t as bad was the rest of us were led to believe? The answer is probably no and yes, so the next question is, will anyone be held accountable? The answer is probably, no. Some believe, it was a test to see how easy it is to control the populus… maybe so, but a generation will be affected for life.

 

Children also fear the consequences of climate change with some fearing our planet is about to burn up… that’s no state of mind any child should have! There are several powerful forces at play that fill the minds of children with fear and it would be fair to say those forces care not a bit concerned about the mental welfare of our kids. I have a farming background and know that kids are taught about farming being the most significant cause of climate change. This can cause a rift within the family unit. But the whole concept of climate change is based on ideology, models and a lot of purposeful misinterpretation of information. Climate alarmists aren’t happy debating the issue because there is no argument that carbon dioxide has massive importance because it supports the world’s food chain… and there’s no substitute! Think about this; say there’s a hundred atoms of carbon mixed with two hundred atoms of oxygen floating in the atmosphere, and grass takes it in and the miracle of photosynthesis changes it into energy… protein and carbohydrate and a cow comes along to consume it. Some of those carbon atoms are used to ‘drive’ the cow, some to make bones and some to form meat and milk. The bacteria in the digestive system takes some carbon atoms to manufacture methane, CH4 and puffs it into the atmosphere, but there are only twenty carbon atoms of the original one hundred left to go into the atmosphere. To start, what harm were those hundred atoms doing in the atmosphere? None… if so, tell me how. So how will those twenty carbon atoms cause harm now? In a few years, the methane will convert to carbon dioxide and water… both being critical to the photosynthesis process. Nevertheless, the children of farmers are facing bullying at school because town-children are frightened of the world ending and their assumed death!

 

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres says things like the sea is boiling and the world is on fire. No wonder kids become afraid, he is a leading world figure, an authority, so if he says so it, it must be true! Back in the day, when we wanted a cold beer after a day’s work in the bush, we would cover the crate of beer with wet sacks, the process of evaporation cooled our beer by about 1°C. This planet has a cover of 74% water, and the heat from the sun evaporates it, with a tiny, yet significant amount of cooling. The water vapour builds up to form clouds… clouds block out the sun, thus cooling the planet, a bit like when you stand under a tree on a sunny day. But because the tops of clouds are white, they reflect incoming radiation from the sun, so the land receive the energy. When conditions change slightly, the clouds condense and it rains, further cooling the planet and the clouds disappear, allowing the sun to start the evaporation process once again. Evaporation is a thermostat, and Guterres is plainly wrong!

**Nature gave we humans sweat glands for the same reason… but he’s a problem, the children I walk past smell like chemist shops because of their ‘antiperspirant’. What harm are those chemicals doing? Maybe if climate alarmists didn’t use ‘antiperspirant’, they wouldn’t get so hot under the collar about climate!

 

Anyone who tries to convince you that emissions of carbon dioxide or methane are dangerous, they are talking about extreme weather events. Pick any decade in the past… the United Kingdom has a very good weather record. You will find worse weather events, fires, floods and droughts happened in the past when the levels of carbon dioxide were much lower than today, which shows carbon dioxide isn’t necessary for adverse conditions to happen. During those times there may well have been more methane because of the vast grasslands where more browsing animals would have lived. You might hear that carbon dioxide is a pollutant… if so, why is it in your favourite cold drink? Billowing smokestacks don’t indicate carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide is invisible and doesn’t smell… instead of spending money on reducing carbon dioxide, it would be sensible to clean up real pollution! Tell your children that they are safe and that changing land use (vegetation cover and asphalt) causes different microclimates, but overall, any changes to the actual climate are down to natural variability, which mankind has coped with for as long as we have been able to stand upright. You will also hear about mass extinctions and a loss of habitat due to climate change… well, the number of endangered species have declined ten-fold over the past one hundred years because the planet is warmer and because of modern protections, it’s the cold that caused the past extinctions, and yes, warmth increases biodiversity, just look at the tropics.

 

We must find ways to enlighten our kids and stop the nonsense by encouraging logic and critical thinking.