{"id":261398,"date":"2023-06-09T13:23:54","date_gmt":"2023-06-09T11:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261398"},"modified":"2023-06-09T13:23:56","modified_gmt":"2023-06-09T11:23:56","slug":"epas-shameless-use-of-children-to-push-climate-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=261398","title":{"rendered":"EPA\u2019s shameless use of children to push climate agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From\u00a0CFACT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Craig Rucker<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The latest \u201cNation\u2019s Report Card<\/a>\u201d found that barely one-fourth of American public school eighth-graders were proficient in math in 2021, compared to a still intolerable one-third in 2018. Eighth-grade reading proficiency also fell. Only 13 percent of all students scored proficient in history,<\/a> 22 percent in civics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most significant drops were among Black, Hispanic, multi-racial, and poor students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the COVID pandemic, school closures replaced in-person learning with online instruction \u2014 impeding students who sat in front of computers or did homework. Staff shortages, closed parks and playgrounds, isolation, and loneliness compounded the problems<\/a>, leading to unprecedented mental health problems, drug use, suicide, misbehavior, and violence once students finally returned to classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But instead of acknowledging these, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona blamed \u201cthe pandemic,\u201d not government and teacher union responses to the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten<\/a> called Trump administration efforts to reopen schools for in-person learning reckless, callous, and cruel<\/a>. She let local union affiliates aggressively oppose schools reopening throughout 2021 and into 2022 and successfully pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make continued closures official agency policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now she says, \u201cWe know young people learn and connect best in person\u201d and has \u201cspent every day from February (2023) on trying to get schools open,\u201d after two years of lockdowns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only thing more misleading, disingenuous, and deserving of lifetime social media bans than this revisionist history would be blaming future learning losses on climate change \u2014 and claiming those losses would affect minorities worst. Yet, that is precisely what the Environmental Protection Agency is doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An April EPA press release<\/a> claims a peer-reviewed report has found \u201c\u2019children are uniquely vulnerable\u2019 to climate-related impacts that can cause \u2018lifelong consequences\u201d\\\u2019 for learning and physical health \u2014 and these effects \u2018disproportionately fall on children who are Black, Indigenous and people of color, low income, without health insurance, and\/or have limited English proficiency.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate models \u201cproject\u201d that temperature increases of 2-4 degrees Celsius (4-7 degrees Fahrenheit) will affect children\u2019s concentration and learning, resulting in 4 percent to 7 percent reductions in academic achievement per child per year and affecting future incomes by thousands of dollars annually per individual, the report continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those losses could be exacerbated by significant increases in children\u2019s asthma, Lyme disease, and the trauma of home displacement or loss from rising seas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report is \u201can important new resource in the Biden-Harris Administration\u2019s efforts to address the climate crisis and advance environmental justice,\u201d the EPA says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It certainly gives the administration another justification for imposing more extreme measures in the name of ameliorating \u201cthe climate crisis\u201d \u2014 on top of new dishwasher and washing machine standards and onerous regulations to eliminate coal and gas power generation, internal combustion vehicles, and gas stoves, ovens, furnaces, and water heaters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, China, India, and a hundred other countries build coal and gas power plants every week. We should keep other facts in mind, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden-Harris administration has been less than honest about how lockdowns affected students\u2019 learning. But its record on energy and climate studies, policies, and regulatory dictates has been just as deceitful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPA\u2019s press release referred to \u201cchildren\u201d 26 times, underscoring the agency\u2019s penchant for relying on emotional appeals rather than real, evidence-based science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Higher temperatures can easily be remediated with air conditioning \u2014 if it\u2019s not rendered unavailable or unaffordable by policies that replace coal, gas, and nuclear electricity generation with weather-dependent wind and solar systems that result in soaring prices and repeated blackouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under Biden-Harris policies, air conditioning could become a luxury available only to wealthy school districts. Other classrooms will swelter, not because of climate change, but because of anti-energy government policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Average global temperatures have risen only 1 degree Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the end of the Little Ice Age and the beginning of the modern industrial revolution \u2014 and climate models have consistently predicted temperature increases nearly twice what satellites and weather balloons have measured. EPA\u2019s fear-inducing global warming projections have zero credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris administration is determined to bring a total, fundamental transformation of America\u2019s energy, economy, and society. It wants to eliminate the reliable electricity that ensures our jobs, health, and living standards before we have proven alternatives to replace it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Children \u2014 and adults \u2014 are more imperiled by climate-obsessed governments, school boards, and teacher unions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article originally appeared at\u00a0DC Journal<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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