> That is difficult for me, because I spend most of my time trying to deprogram my daughters after each day's eco-propaganda session. The schools here (and there, too, I bet) are as big on the environment as they were on God when I went.
Yeah, eco-propaganda has been a major part of the curriculum in American public schools for at least the better part of the last two decades, but it's wholly compatible with consumer capitalism. Sure, they drill the "Three Rs" mantra into you -- "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" -- but the only part that's really emphasized is the least effective and most conducive to capitalist appropriation: recycling. Reducing and reusing get superficial treatment, and ecological destruction is portrayed as an almost exclusively technological problem: We just need new and improved cars, appliances and insulation -- no need to do anything drastic, just make some minor lifestyle changes.
-WD