Sheila Gunn-Reed warns that climate fear-mongering—like Greta Thunberg’s messaging and media narratives—triggers anxiety in children, framing them as sole saviors while ignoring systemic issues like container ships emitting CO2 equivalent to 50 million cars. Research flaws, including surveys of toddlers, and billion-dollar ENGOs pushing policies like a $210/ton carbon tax fuel her critique. Michelle Sterling’s hopeful videos and books counter this, debunking exaggerated fears as natural cycles, offering children calm over neuroses. Gunn-Reed argues alarmism exploits kids while suppressing dissent, prioritizing psychological harm over realistic solutions. [Automatically generated summary]
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Tonight, my guest is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science, and we're talking about the undue anxiety about climate change manifesting in a generation of small children, and we're going to tell you who's to blame.
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Adults are making their irrational fears about climate change contagious for children now.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Some children find spending time in nature distressing because it can trigger feelings of anxiety and despair linked to climate change.
Friends, that was a very recent headline in the Daily Mail, one of the world's largest publications.
It goes on.
These troubling emotions and their link to climate change have been studied by University of Columbia researchers for the British Psychological Society.
Children and teenagers were triggered by the natural world and their inability to control what was happening to the quote, unraveling biosphere, the team said.
However, the good news to come out of the study, though, was that the remedy for this fear of the natural world was increased exposure to the natural world.
Look at this from the same article.
There is strong evidence that children are happier, healthier, function better, know more about the environment, and are more likely to take action to protect the natural world when they spend time in nature.
No kidding.
Several studies found that children's connection with nature increased with time spent in natural environments.
Again, no kidding.
Now, I read this as kids worry less about their effect on nature when they spend time in nature and they get to see how resilient nature is.
But also, kids value nature when they're in it as opposed to when they experience it in a book.
And they're then compelled to become conservationists rather than radical environmentalists.
Now joining me today to talk about the issue of adult climate change anxiety manifesting in little children and how she's doing something in her own little way to alleviate those fears in small children is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.
Joining me now from her home in Calgary is good friend of the show, friend of mine, Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.
Michelle, I wanted to have you on the show because you're actually doing something and we'll get to that in a little bit in a way that I think you're doing work that nobody else is to alleviate some of this anxiety that all the adults are infecting kids with about climate change.
But first, please, because you've done some work on this.
You've done actually a few videos on the Friends of Science YouTube channel about how kids just sort of need to chill out.
But I mean, the Daily Mail is one of the world's largest publications.
I think on some days it is the world's largest publication.
And this isn't the only article of its kind that I've seen, that some children are finding spending time in nature distressing because it can trigger feelings of anxiety and despair linked to climate change.
And the researchers use words like the children are triggered by the natural world and their inability to control what was happening to the unraveling biosphere.
It seems like these studies are designed to elicit a certain response from the kids.
It's like, you know, a solution in search of a problem.
Yes, well, that study is, you know, quite a novel thing because this woman reviewed a number of different pieces of research that are out there.
Her name is Louise Chaola.
And these are all quite diverse pieces of sociological research on children's perceptions of nature.
And most of the thrust of the paper seems to be trying to incorporate the idea that if you love nature, then you'll be a good eco-citizen.
You'll recycle.
You'll be kind to pets and animals and such like, and your life will be fulfilled.
And there's a lot of talk in there about how spending time in nature makes one feel at one with nature and such like.
And one of the interesting things is that one of the studies she mentions had a survey of children that were two and a half years old.
And so because children can't really talk at that age, they kind of used their parents as the transference method.
So, you know, what are you really trying to ascertain from a two and a half year old who can't speak and has no greater understanding of the world?
You know, a child who, when their mother or father leaves the room, they often will start crying because their parent is gone and they don't quite understand that they're just in the other room.
You know, so you're surveying people who have no sense of the complex world and yet trying to draw some conclusions about how they feel in nature.
One of the other things I found quite interesting is that one of the surveys found that children as young as five are afraid of the world getting too hot.
So, you know, you start to question what have we inculcated in the very smallest children of this world, but fear of the environment.
And then they wonder why they're afraid to go into nature.
I think it's quite evil to do this to young children.
I think young children need to live with hope for the future and not fear that they are in some sort of apocalyptic end times.
I mean, if a doomsday cult did this to children, we would call it child abuse.
But when the environmental movement does it, we say, okay, well, it's a legitimate psychological disorder, this anxiety that kids are experiencing, and apparently only taxes fix it.
Now, you have actually been sort of on the forefront of trying to undo what I would call the Greta Tinberg effect, this amplification of children's role on the front lines against climate change.
I mean, Greta Tinberg is telling children that not only is the world going to end because of your parents, but if you do not, if it is to be saved, it must be saved by the children.
I think that's a horrific responsibility to put on kids, but you've been actually doing your best to undo this through a series of videos.
Like you have a video, popular video over on the Friends of Science YouTube page that says, I don't want to die, and you break down the climate exploitation of children.
Well, I don't want to die stems from a mother in Toronto whose child was at school.
And I think it was the 3% project that came in.
And they showed, you know, how catastrophically the world is going to end to a group of children.
Children were being funneled in and out of the library for this presentation.
And, you know, a lot of the kids were like, I don't want to die.
So this very brave mother went to the press and got a story published about it, exposing this.
And I don't think that parents are really aware of the kind of influence that's going on in schools from these scaremongers.
And I guess in one sense, we can see that with the We Charity thing blowing up, where people finally realize, wait a minute, our kids are being indoctrinated in schools by people with questionable motives.
And that's what we see with the whole Greta Thunberg thing, where behind her are a group of green billionaires who are pushing carbon offset trading.
That's their whole mandate.
And she's like their walking native ad.
Native advertising is sort of a recent development in advertising where a sponsored article appears in the news as if a credible editorial article sanctioned by a newspaper and written by journalists when it's really a sponsored thing.
So people perceive it as a real news story.
So Greta is perceived as a real citizen, you know, traveling the world with her message.
But actually behind her are people who own Time magazine, people who own a big ad agency, people who are running a social engineering social media platform with, when they started with their IPO, they had 100 million users.
You know, that's the kind of power and influence they wanted to get out there.
And actually, left-wing journalist and author Corey Morningstar has written lots and lots and lots of this.
She's done fantastic research on this whole sort of capitalist green crony capitalist movement behind Greta Thunberg and how people are just being incredibly duped by it all.
But it's really tragic because we have children who are terrified now of nature, of their future.
Existential doom is very high.
I was reading a report the other day about a child in, I think it was in Australia, who was suffering from climate delusion.
They almost died from not drinking water because they thought if they drank more water, it would mean that Australian bushfires would be out of control.
So people are highly suggestible.
So when you take small people and you give them these impressions, it can just go right to the nth degree with them and they don't have a context to make better sense of it, especially if their parents are also, you know, egonuts.
Yeah, especially if this is the world in which children live and it's hard for kids to escape it, even if they have reasonable parents, the schools are completely infected with this.
This is this climate doom and gloom.
It's the common parlance of science in school.
And so it's hard for even good parents to prevent their children from becoming contaminated with this sort of worry.
Right.
And also in schools, as noted in this paper in a number of these studies, you know, when you and I grew up, or say your kids living out on the farm, you know, of course you'd go and spend time in nature.
I mean, that's what we used to do.
We used to go sit under a tree and watch the ants.
You know, we used to go into the backwash and play where the lilies grew.
We spent hours and hours out in the forest.
We used to watch our dog being chased around by a coyote and chasing back.
You know, these were like normal things for us.
The way to spend an afternoon was to go for a walk in the woods or a walk in the field or to do some chores around the house.
So yes, there is a fear of nature on the one hand because it's very big.
And I think that that's actually, you know, a common theme in Canadian literature and art.
If you go back to, say, the group of seven and you look, I call them the lucky seven, but when you look, you know, their art, nature is very stern and imposing and threatening.
And when you think of the vast expanses here, yes, it can be very threatening.
But when you grow up in nature on a farm or when you go camping and hiking, and you learn to live with nature and enjoy it and be prepared for those fearful things.
But what schools are doing now, and according to many of the things in the study, many of the papers in this study, you know, they're just using nature trips as a means of pushing an ecological agenda.
So you're not actually teaching kids to enjoy nature and just observe it and be there and draw your own conclusions.
You have this end game that you want to impose upon them that, you know, completely detracts from the ability just to simply enjoy it.
You know, it's funny how you, as you were speaking about the group of seven, I thought about how sometime in the last 50 years, the switch has flipped.
As human beings, especially Canadians, and I think especially because of just our geography, the size of our country, the kind of climate in which we live, we realized that nature could be dangerous and it was foreboding and much bigger than us, something that we could barely dream to control.
Climate Realism Attack00:07:20
And now, according to environmentalists, nature is something to be feared, but not because we can't control it, but because we do control it by our behavior.
Right, they flipped the narrative.
Just as you were speaking of that, I was thinking of the Jack London story to light a fire.
I think it's really worth people reading that, especially city people who are so obsessed with climate change and such.
Like, read this old-time story of a prospector who goes alone with his dog into the woods trying to set up, get to the next camp.
And along the way, he falls into the stream, gets soaked, it's the middle of winter, he tries to light a fire, he's got a few matches, but he doesn't succeed.
And, you know, when you read that, you understand that humans do live on this edge with the climate and with the environment that we're in.
And the only thing that has saved us from that is our ability to move technology forward, to understand engineering, to create all the many wonderful comforts that we have, like an insulated house, you know, because people used to live in a hut.
But along the way, all those people also appreciated nature.
Like when you see historic images, people painting pictures of flowers and trees and landscapes, there's obviously a great sense of joy and glory and wonder that goes along with the fact that they lived in very difficult and fearful times.
And today it's kind of the opposite, especially urban people are so separated from the realities of survival that they can only see nature as a means to a climate change narrative rather than seeing themselves as part of the natural world.
Now, moving on to, I guess, the flip side of this debate about, you know, kids being infected with climate anxiety, there are some young people who are actually being infected by climate realism, and they are being attacked by the liberal media.
And it's funny to see the liberal media complain about our side of the debate using words like climate realism to describe how we feel about climate change when they insist that we should use words like climate denialism.
And so it's funny to hear them get angry because we don't use the words that they think are accurate when they're the ones who started off with global warming, then it was climate change, then it was climate weirding, whatever it is.
Global weirding.
Global weirding.
I mean, like they are constantly shifting the words to fit what's going on or what isn't going on, what hasn't manifested itself.
And yet when we say we're just realists, we probably think that humans do affect the environment around them, as anything within an environment would, but we don't think it's a catastrophe the way the other side says.
And when we have kids step up and say, I refuse to be a worry wart, they get attacked by grown-up liberal journalists.
And I thought liberal journalists were against that sort of thing.
Yeah, that's quite true.
Yeah, there's recently an article in the New Republic where Giulio Corsi and Stella Levantisi.
Julio is a PhD student at candidate at Cambridge University, which is Isaac Newton's university.
And he and Stella, who's a journalist in Italy, joined forces to write a polemic against Naomi site because they say, well, her realism is actually the new form of climate denial.
And then they also mentioned us as the notorious deniers, friends of science.
Of course, this fabulous PhD candidate researcher didn't even bother to contact us. to ask us what our perspective is on climate change.
He just assumed it from DeSmogblog and DeSmogblog is of course set up by an Al Gore acolyte.
So this is a very improbable source of impartial information.
So yeah, they just went after Naomi for not accepting the alarmist viewpoint, for being a denialist and went after us.
And so I wrote an article on Medium, on the blog Medium, talking about climate dogma versus scientific inquiry.
Like if these people are investigative journalists and PhD candidates, why wouldn't they look into why Naomi site is not an alarmist?
Why wouldn't they ask her?
Why wouldn't they interview some of the people whose references she refers to and see whether or not she actually has any value to her position?
So it's, you know, it's funny to see that people at universities not only no longer value academic freedom, they actively try to suppress freedom of speech and scientific inquiry.
So what is the world going to come to?
You know, when we're raising children who are afraid of nature and afraid to ask questions and terrified that the world will end, and they're ending up as PhD candidates in what used to be one of the top universities in the world, you know, writing a bullying, name-calling article to smear a 19-year-old young woman who happens to think for herself.
You know, she should be at Cambridge.
She should be the PhD candidate.
She's the one who's actually asking questions.
Yeah, I read that New Republic article and I got the same sense that I got when I was reading through the article about the nature studies causing and nature causing distress in kids.
It was very clearly an article written and the conclusions had already been drawn before they formulated the idea for the article.
And, you know, it's pretty clear when they don't reach out to the other side, they don't care.
They don't care what you have to say.
They don't care how you want to represent yourself.
They don't really care about the truth.
They just care about their vision of what you had to say.
Right.
And even if they reach out and disagree with us, you know, but state what we think, and then you can counter it in any way you want.
But at least have that courtesy and journalistic integrity to find out from the actual source rather than relying on what is obviously a propaganda site, DeSmogblog.
Right.
Now, we've talked about Naomi.
Giving Kids Hope00:07:15
We've talked about the problems of the anxiety.
I want to now talk about the solutions that you're sort of bringing forward.
You've done two videos now that are sort of geared towards smaller children.
I think they're great.
I think my daughter is going to love seeing the little bunny family that she has in her bedroom featured in a video that you have done called the Tiny Rabbit Family.
And you've written a book, you're turning the second video into a book.
I couldn't be happier that there's somebody out there who is just giving kids the straight facts about nature, about the environment, without any sort of ideology except an ideology of hope for the future.
I think that's great.
Well, I think, thank you very much.
That's really, really, you know, kind and supportive because we, of course, get a lot of flack most of the time.
But, you know, the main thing is for me, I want to help calm people down, first of all.
I also did a video review of Margaret Klein-Solomon's book, Taking on the Climate Emergency, I think it's called.
Anyway, you know, she's the clinical psychologist behind the whole idea of your house is on fire.
Our house is on fire.
So I want to first try and help people calm down.
And then secondly, offer them just a light-hearted perspective that's not loaded with facts and not loaded with fear, but just something that opens that door and gives people an opportunity to think, oh, yes, you know, and in the tiny rabbit family,
we basically have the little boy contemplating how big is the sky, and then he ends up in kind of a dream sequence going on a tour of the universe with his family, or not the universe, the solar system with his family.
And they realize how big the sun is.
You know, because lots of people say, oh, the sun isn't a factor in climate change.
Well, it's a big factor in climate change.
And people usually go along with that theme that it's not because they have no idea how big it is in proportion to the earth.
It's true that we're very, very far away from the sun, but when you see the scale and ratio, you know, it's really breathtaking.
So I'm just trying to set a little bit more context for people, give them, as you say, a little bit of hope and relieve that burden.
You know, in a paper that came out a couple of years ago, and you and I did an interview about it as well, or about a year ago, and it was by Wins and Nicholas.
And they were the people who came up with the grand idea that you could save the planet by having one less child, you know, and then going vegan and all this other stuff.
Well, you know, actually, one of those big container ships puts out the equivalent pollution of like 50 million cars, the equivalent CO2 emissions of 20 million cars.
So you going vegan or not having a child is not going to save the planet.
Like these big industrial emitters, that's where the challenge is if you accept the thesis of global warming.
And even if not, you should certainly look at the pollution from some of these large emitters.
And it's something that we can address with technology.
But you not having a child or you turning children into a carbon footprint instead of a person, that's not where you're going to save the planet.
You know, and it's sick.
And it really leads to, I think, children starting to think, hey, you know, A, I should never have been brought into this world.
And that's a common theme running through.
I listened to an interview on the New Republic by Emily Atkin.
And this common theme that I should not bring children into the world in a climate-constrained environment.
Well, people were thinking that about nuclear warheads back in the 60s.
You know, they got over it.
But of course, that was not pervasive as it is today with climate change.
And, you know, in that interview, it's so depressing because they're talking about children as if they're a problem.
And the one host is actually saying, well, I actually have a child.
you know, waiting for these other two who don't have children and aren't going to have them to like jump on him and crucify him.
And he says, you know, and Ashley, we'd like to have another child because we don't want our child to grow up alone.
Oh my gosh.
So, but this is a sickness.
This is a terrible thing.
Children are a miracle.
They're a wonder to raise.
Sometimes they're trouble, but, you know, most of the time, they're just really the grandest experiment that a person could ever be involved in.
And it's a miracle that children come into this world.
We still are not very clear on how this magically happens.
We know the process, but we, you know, we can't control that either.
So it's a terrible, terrible, terrible thing that we're doing to children's psyche.
Now, Michelle, can you tell us where people can get your first book?
Tell us a little bit about the first book.
Because I was shocked to learn that you wrote a children's book.
You didn't tell me.
And you are turning the rabbit family into a book also.
But tell us about the first book that came out.
The first kid-friendly climate tale book is about the little hedgehog family.
And basically, we just took the video that we did and turned it into a book.
But the video is sort of like the little girl hedgehog waking up in the middle of the night in a nightmare, you know, dreaming of all the doom and gloom that Greta has imbued her with.
And mom comes to try and help.
Little brother comes running in and he is afraid of Greta too.
And then dad shows up and he's like, what's going on?
You know, and realizes that these fears have just mushroomed far beyond reality.
So he treats it like the monster under the bed, you know, like I'll show you what the climate change monster is and like flips the bed over and there's nothing there.
So, you know, it's just a very simple way of trying to say, look, this is way out of proportion.
It's just like a bad dream.
Come back down to earth.
And, you know, climate change is real, but it's something that goes on every day and has gone on for 4.5 billion years and will continue to go on.
So we don't have to be alarmed about it.
The name of the book and where people can get it?
I can't remember the name of the book off the top of my head.
I didn't think he'd ask me about it.
So people can get it on my Kindle page.
Dark Clouds of Conflict00:03:52
Okay, perfect.
I'll get my producer to show a page of the book so that people know.
I'm the same way.
Don't ask me the byline or not the byline, but the title of the Suzuki book.
I don't know.
I'm always struggling to remember what kind of mean thing I said about David Suzuki.
Michelle, how do people support the work that you do at Friends of Science?
Because you're not a big operation, but you're one of maybe two or three organizations in the entire country doing the kind of work that you're doing.
Well, people can become a member.
You can go to our main page and there's a little membership donate button in the corner or you can donate to us.
Maybe if you're strapped for cash, that doesn't work for you.
you can share our stuff, watch, learn, talk with your family and friends.
And, you know, overall, I would say we need to calm the climate hysteria down and we need to advocate for sensible, affordable, due diligence on climate and energy policies and make sure that these very large ENGOs are not out of control.
I wanted to mention we just released a report called Dark Clouds of Conflict of Interest.
And I don't think people realize that there's an amassing of power in the ENGO community that is beyond compare to anything of the electorate or Canadian Taxpayers Federation or any of these little groups that support the oil sands.
And they're advocating for a climate accountability law, which we don't need.
We have absolutely no need for it.
But if it were implemented, it would completely devastate our economy in Canada.
So we've got this new report called Dark Clouds of Conflict of Interest.
And if you think the sort of billion-dollar weed charity scandal was a problem for taxpayers, you need to look at this and see what kind of billions of dollars they are planning to spend.
And, you know, part of that, they're advocating for a $210 a ton carbon tax.
We're at 30 now.
So think what that'll do to your home economy and to this country.
Well, Michelle, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show, for being this beacon of calm in a world of climate hysteria.
I wish you the best of luck on the new book, whatever that title will be, and we'll have you back on again real soon.
Okay, thanks so much, Sheila.
All the best and keep up the good work.
I will.
I like to call what is happening to the world's children the Greta Thunberg effect.
The privileged, hectoring teenage climate activist has told children that not only is their world ending, but if it were to be saved at all, it must be saved by them.
That's absolutely crazy.
And her voice, it's been amplified by teachers and politicians and especially the media.
It's creating a neuroses in a generation of children, and everybody involved should be absolutely ashamed of what they've done.
Children deserve the facts in a way that they can understand, but they also deserve to be raised with a sense of hope and not fear and hopelessness that the climate activists want them to have.
This also that the climate activists can mobilize these children into an army for change.
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.