How could you compare your daughter to the Republicans? That is not nice.

Market forces will like to keep her in that blisfull state of ignorence and denial. They need to keep her from growing up in order to keep her a satisfied and happy customer living in a consumer orientated world of strip malls, online shopping paradises and other institutions designed to mortgage and credit away her future for the sake of the credo of the GOP as formulated by its great visionary leader George W. Bush while standing on the rubble of the WTC:

“Lets go shopping”

But there excists an antidote to all economic infiltration into our live. It is not written by Marx and Engels but by Benjamin Barber and its called “Consumed, how markets corrupt children, infantalize adults, and swallow citizens whole”. So learn her how to read and make this the book she learns it by . If you would by any chance not have read it yourself, its a great read for adults as well, it cut short my own shopping addiction in 1 week (and saved me thousands of dollars on high street shit which o only contribution to my live was to clutter up my appartment and stress me with missing wallwarts (150 wallwarts was the last count)).

Greetings,

Ed Kuipers

I find it comforting to note that as our daughters are reaching ages of maturity, responsibility and power, the (forever?) infantile GOPers will largely be senile or dead. Can’t come fast enough.

Best,

D

Gail and Lou are correct: If we were all to focus on our children, what a difference it would make. When I first read in 2002 that the summer Arctic sea ice could disappear by 2050, I was truly frightened. I thought, “My grandchildren will be alive when that happens,” and turned into a climate change activist overnight. Now, science has learned better, and it looks like I’ll be alive as well. El Nino is back, and we have all sorts of warming heading our way. Maybe this will be the year the Republican members of Congress realize we’re really in trouble and start to grow up.

Joe, I don’t think I’ve seen a lovelier little girl. I’m sending her a virtual hug, and please tell her there are a lot of us out here who care about her and will keep her in our thoughts.

Thank you. You’re a gread dad.

Other ways she is unlike the GOP: you love and enjoy her company, listen to her words, and sometimes you may indulge her and give in to her unreasonable demands.

What drives me to relentlessly focus on the perils of climate change is not just my own children – terrified though I am on their behalf- but the unfathomably hideous prospect that all of the splendid things created by the human imagination – from literature to paintings to architecture to sculpture to scrumptious recipes – will ultimately be lost, since we depend, though we may not realize it, on the vast and interlinked ecosystems on land and in the oceans. We are laying waste to our own habitat, destroying all forms of life from butterflies to fish to trees.

Humans are so greedy and stupid!

We really should focus on our children and what we need to do to assure them a future life that is safe and fulfilling, instead of trying to figure out how to buy more junk. Americans in particular create staggering amounts of waste.

In the case of the GOP — does that mean they’ll stop talking altogether?

Yes.

Am I the only one in this discussion who disagrees with the “cheap political points” characterization, and finds tying that to Joe’s photo of his daughter a lot off-putting?

I suspect not.

The bottom line is that the “do it for the kids” angle, simple generational responsibility, is what drives many of us who are fighting relentlessly to educate and activate mainstreamers on the topics of peak oil and climate chaos. As I’ve said repeatedly online, they’re all our kids, even if they don’t share our DNA.