"Carbon Control" - Education or Indoctrination?

The Association of British Drivers is very concerned about a government-backed scheme which targets children as young as seven with man-made climate change messages.

The 'Carbon Control' project, organised by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) is being run in cooperation with DEFRA (The Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs).

The project, which is also supported by Tesco, presents as received wisdom the one sided message that climate change is totally man-made. Then, it relentlessly imparts the notion that lifestyle changes are essential to prevent catastrophic climate change. It does this in the hope that children will harangue their parents to reduce their 'carbon footprint' by using their cars less, and other ideologically motivated lifestyle changes.

An RSA press release issued on the 14th June 2007 described children as "influencers on their parents' decisions". This has worrying echoes of the way children were used to exert control over their parents in 1930's Germany.

ABD Environment Spokesman Ben Adams said: "More and more adults are rightly becoming sceptical about the party line on climate change, and the "global warming industry" is resorting to increasingly desperate tactics to keep their scare story bandwagon rolling. Education is supposed to teach children to think for themselves - and to protect them from brainwashing on issues they cannot fully understand. We already have parents trying to prevent the uncritical showing of Al Gore's money-spinning, but scientifically dubious "Inconvenient Truth" as part of the National Curriculum, and parents will be similarly unimpressed by this latest tactic."

ABD Chairman Brian Gregory said: "This is not 'carbon control', this is 'mind control', and I am appalled that Tesco are participating in this exercise to turn the nation's children into political weapons against their own parents. I would urge Tesco to re-consider their involvement in this scheme, as they could well find that they alienate parents, who may decide to take their business elsewhere."