Party Like It’s 1984

Climate Change: Imagine a society in which children are encouraged to be informants against their families over a phony issue? Imagine no longer.

We’re not talking about kids turning in parents who commit serious crimes. We’re talking about children tallying up environmental transgressions, such as leaving the water running or the lights on too long.

Sounds benign, almost like a little family fun? That’s what NPower, a British electricity provider and creator of the Climate Cops campaign, which has its own Web site, wants the public to think.

But the program has an unpleasant odor. In fact, it is truly Orwellian. Kids are expected to keep diaries in which they record their families’ environmental sins — a “climate crime case file” — and are urged to talk about the offenses in their classrooms.

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It’s just a way to raise awareness of global warming and how waste contributes to climate change, nothing more, NPower says, and children won’t really be telling on mom and dad anyway.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Don’t be duped. One, the threat of kids informing on their parents is implied and should make anyone uncomfortable. Two, the campaign puts into place a foundation — and a mind-set — that a future informant program could operate on.

On Thursday, we noted on this page the British study recommending the rationing of meat and milk to hold back climate change. Today, it’s kids squealing on parents who don’t practice environmentalist-approved habits at home.

Tomorrow, we fear, is likely to bring yet another campaign in which elitists use the nonexistent threat of global warming to force the lifestyle changes they think are necessary on people they could not otherwise control.