Shrinks want to paint your brain Green

How far will Greens go to make you one of them? See the article copied at bottom:

"...the 148,000-member American Psychological Association is stepping up efforts
to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will
translate into more public action to protect the planet."

Well, let's not forget USAToday -- if you open the link, this story was completely SURROUNDED by Green propaganda that I cut because it was so nauseating. I must care for my readers' mental health. More than the APA does.

"American Psychological Association leaders say they want to launch a national
initiative specifically targeting behavior changes, including developing media
messages that will help people reduce their carbon footprint and pay more
attention to ways they can conserve. They want to work with other organizations
and enlist congressional support to help fund the effort."

Sounds like a Hollywood conspiracy flick ...a secret project to control the minds of an entire country... Ever see "Conspiracy Theory"? But on a bigger scale, with more nefarious objectives. More like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets the Stepford Wives". Or "Star Trek Next Generation -- Stalag 17 meets the Gulag Archipelago": Jean Luc Picard Takes on the Borg Collective who have overrun the headquarters of the American Psychological Association.

Seriously, how bad does it have to get that a quasi-medical organization believes it has right to "change the behavior" of the entire country to promote a political/religious agenda?

"Social psychologist Jessica Nolan studied the issue at the University of
Arkansas-Fayetteville ...[and] found that students are not particularly inclined
to disapprove of the non-sustainable behavior of others."

Read between the lines: what this really means is that psychologists have to change our "behavior" so that we *do* disapprove of the "non-sustainable" behavior others.

"News stories that provided a balanced view of climate change reduced people's
beliefs that humans are at fault and also reduced the number of people who
thought climate change would be bad, according to research by Stanford social
psychologist Jon Krosnick. "

... the sentence preceding had the reporter lead into this by saying "negative feedback for those more invested in the environment promotes more sustainable behavior" -- but that is *not* what it means -- what Stanford social psychologist Jon Krosnick means is, *stop criticism of climate change in news stories*.

"Paul Stern, a researcher at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington,
D.C., says people generally want to do the right thing but don't know what it
is. "

Again, the point is, people have to be brainwashed by the APA so they know what the right thing is.

"We are recognizing that environmental problems have a tremendous impact on many
aspects of our lives, but we need a lot more work," he says. "We can't afford to
let this increased environmental concern become just another fashionable trend."

You've got to concretize the meaning of all this -- if it isn't going to be just another fashionable trend, then they've got to force people to support it. They've got to brainwash people with Green propaganda in newsprint and elsewhere (aided and abetted by "news" orgs such as USAToday). They've got to institutionalize it -- in schools, above all, even more than it is now, in more government programs that "protect" the environment, in laws that will *make* you protect the environment -- like San Francisco's forced recycling program, where you face a $1000 fine if you don't "participate".

Give these goons time -- it will spread to the use of lightbulbs, the type and amount of gasoline you buy, the type of car you drive, the appearance of your yard (are you using eco-friendly vegetation?), monitering devices (like the cameras in Britain to moniter your re-cycling habits), to almost anything you can imagine -- fines, felony convictions, "Green Police" (like they have in Boulder, Colorado), busted-in doors, and other qualities of a fully eco-friendly nation.

I mean it. It's limited only by the imagination of these people. I'm reminded once again of a quote from "The Fountainhead" that I used in a recent LTE. It occurs to me often, because it captures the soul of the Left so well (not that the Right isn't occasionally guilty of this, but not as consistently -- for the Left, it's a raison d'etre).

As I said in the LTE, the quote comes when arch-Leftist/Marxist and cynically erudite newspaper columnist Ellsworth Toohey confesses to Peter Keating, the man who sold his soul, his motives for destroying the independent man represented by architect Howard Roark:

"I don't want to kill him. I want him in jail. You understand? In jail. In a
cell. Behind bars. Locked, stopped, strapped--and alive. He'll get up when they
tell him to. He'll eat what they give him. He'll move when he's told to move and
stop when he's told. He'll walk to the jute mill, when he's told, and he'll work
as he's told. They'll push him, if he doesn't move fast enough, and they'll slap
his face when they feel like it, and they'll beat him with rubber hose if he
doesn't obey. And he'll obey. He'll take orders. He'll take orders!""

The day the APA gets its way, I suspect they will discover another consequence or two of Ayn Rand's adage that "you can't force a mind" --


http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2008-08-13-green-psychology_N.htm?csp=1

Psychologists determine what it means to think 'green'
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
Those who make human behavior their business aim to make living "green" your business.
Armed with new research into what makes some people environmentally conscious and others less so, the 148,000-member American Psychological Association is stepping up efforts to foster a broader sense of eco-sensitivity that the group believes will translate into more public action to protect the planet.
"We know how to change behavior and attitudes. That is what we do," says Yale University psychologist Alan Kazdin, association president. "We know what messages will work and what will not."
During a four-day meeting that begins today in Boston, an expected 16,000 attendees will hear presentations, including studies that explore how people experience the environment, their attitudes about climate change and what social barriers prevent conservation of resources.
Among the yet-unpublished findings:
• Walking outside rather than inside — even for just 15 minutes — makes you feel happier, more energetic and more protective of the environment, found two studies involving 220 students conducted by psychologists at Carleton University in Ottawa. Researcher Elizabeth Nisbet suggests the findings have broader implications for well-being and mental health.

"People know outside is going to feel much better for them but underpredict how happy they're going to feel after being outside in nature even 15 minutes," she says. "The people inside overestimate their happiness about being inside. It's this error in judgment people have about how happy they are in a different environment that may explain why people don't spend more time in nature."
Behind the research
• Negative feedback can backfire. In two studies, psychologist Amara Brook of California's Santa Clara University and colleague Jennifer Crocker of the University of Michigan asked 212 undergraduates about their ecological footprint. For those not heavily invested in the environment, negative feedback about their ecological footprint actually undermines their environmental behavior, they found.
"Rather than changing their ways to protect the environment, the results of this study suggest that these (people) may give up on their efforts to protect the environment," they report.
But negative feedback for those more invested in the environment promotes more sustainable behavior, they found.
• News stories that provided a balanced view of climate change reduced people's beliefs that humans are at fault and also reduced the number of people who thought climate change would be bad, according to research by Stanford social psychologist Jon Krosnick.
His presentation will detail a decade of American attitudes about climate change. His new experiment, conducted in May, illustrates what he says is a public misperception about global warming. He says there is scientific consensus among experts that climate change is occurring, but the nationwide online poll of 2,600 adults asked whether they believe scientists agree or disagree about it.
By editing CNN and PBS news stories so that some saw a skeptic included in the report, others saw a story in which the skeptic was edited out and another group saw no video, Krosnick found that adding 45 seconds of a skeptic to one news story caused 11% of Americans to shift their opinions about the scientific consensus. Rather than 58% believing a perceived scientific agreement, inclusion of the skeptic caused the perceived amount of agreement to drop to 47%.
American Psychological Association leaders say they want to launch a national initiative specifically targeting behavior changes, including developing media messages that will help people reduce their carbon footprint and pay more attention to ways they can conserve. They want to work with other organizations and enlist congressional support to help fund the effort.
A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll last year found that people know they could do more. Of 1,007 adults surveyed, only about half thought they personally did a good job of protecting the environment; less than 10% said their efforts were "excellent."
Messages that tell people to "be green" or encourage them to follow a more ecologically aware way of living aren't necessarily having the desired effect, psychologists say. Although people know the buzzwords — "sustainability," "carbon footprint" and "global warming" — they aren't really sure what they mean or what they personally can do.
Confusion abounds
"I think most people recognize we face a severe environmental crisis, but it's hard to deal with that head-on because most people feel helpless to do anything about it," says Douglas Vakoch, a clinical psychologist at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.
"If we look at the nature of the problem, it is so big it's hard to know what any individual can do in their own life to make a difference," he says. "The tendency when people are confronted with an overwhelming problem is to run away from it, so psychologists are very experienced in dealing with that."
Paul Stern, a researcher at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., says people generally want to do the right thing but don't know what it is. And he says they have "mistaken impressions" about what will actually affect energy use.
At the meeting, Stern will present a preview of a report he co-authored that outlines the behaviors that matter most in terms of energy consumption. The report, which will appear in the September/October issue of Environment magazine, is the latest update of a list initially analyzed in 1981.
"One of the first things you think of is turning off lights when you leave a room or changing the thermostat settings in the house. They don't think first of caulking windows or upgrading your furnace," Stern says. "More insulation in the attic and tight windows make more difference than changing the thermostat setting. Having a more fuel-efficient car makes more difference than any amount you're likely to decrease driving."
Because Stern's research was on energy use, he didn't look at recycling. Social psychologist Jessica Nolan studied the issue at the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville.
Nolan, who this fall will be an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, examined global warming, recycling and improper disposal of used motor oil with three studies involving a total of 289 students.
She found that students are not particularly inclined to disapprove of the non-sustainable behavior of others.
"People showed strong approval for other students who recycled. You would hope to see people disapprove of people who don't recycle, but they didn't disapprove," she says.
But, she says, the response was stronger if the activity was perceived as more harmful: More students said they would scold someone if they saw that person improperly disposing of motor oil.
Vakoch says more research is needed to encourage greater sensitivity to the natural world.
"We are recognizing that environmental problems have a tremendous impact on many aspects of our lives, but we need a lot more work," he says. "We can't afford to let this increased environmental concern become just another fashionable trend."

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