Why I Am Enlarging My Carbon Footprint

By Robin of Berkeley

As a psychotherapist, I try my best to calm down my anxious clients. But in this case, I inadvertently triggered a panic attack.

My twenty-something client Emma, a survivor of the Berkeley public schools, had a coughing fit during our session. I helpfully got up to get her some water. When I handed her a cup, she looked at it, incredulous.
Her voice quivering, she asked, "Is this Styrofoam?"
I said yes. She stared at the cup, mesmerized by this forbidden fruit. When she finally found her words, she said, "I've never seen Styrofoam before. We learned in school that it kills baby birds."
Worried that Emma would bolt, I quickly defended the contraband, "Actually, I bought the cups years ago, and still have a few left."
When Emma returned the next week (thankfully), I asked about her reaction. She flooded me with stories about indoctrination by teachers. One of her earliest memories was singing songs on Earth Day, prayerfully, when she was five.
A sensitive soul, Emma became terrified that her beloved Earth would perish, and that she'd be culpable. Starting in third grade, she became an environmental fanatic. Emma went ballistic on her disabled grandmother when the old woman threw a bottle in the trash.
After school, she and her friends would sift through other people's garbage to root out recyclables. While Berkeley has plenty of homeless folks going through trash, Emma and her friends were out to save the world.
The poor thing would even sob in her car when she had to drive more than a few miles. She envisioned the pollution burning up the rain forests and asphyxiating polar bears.
A year into our therapy/cult deprogramming, I asked Emma about her fixation with all things ecological. She replied, "I'm over it."
Emma hasn't morphed into a consumer-glutton. But she's not making herself a stress case anymore. Emma even told me, with obvious pride, that for the first time in her life, she took a road trip.
How did I help Emma snap out of her trance? I simply imparted truths that someone should have communicated years ago, like the following:
Emma, you're a wonderful, good-hearted person. You deserve to be here. Your life is a blessing. It's OK to drive your car or to take a bag from the store. You deserve all these things and more. Besides, the earth has been here for millions of years and will be here long after your great grandchildren are gone.
Now, if the planet is not about to crash and burn, why turn children like Emma into eco-warriors? Why condition them to take three-minute showers and lambaste their elders?
The Left's underlying goal: to convince all of us that we don't matter. Our happiness, our cleanliness, our ease of living, our money, and our time...it's the government's business, not ours. While Marxist theory celebrates the proletarian, in actuality, people become interchangeable cogs in the collective wheel. Read more.